Skin and Bones
by unfortunately1
Summary: Life isn't fair - it never was fair and it never will be, not for you, not for the children forced to fight in a never-ending war, not for anyone. But count yourself lucky that unlike everyone else here, you have - had - something that nobody else has. After all, in your first world you had everything. Rebirth OC, Warring Era.
1. Prologue

****Skin and Bones****

Life isn't fair - it never was fair and it never will be, not for you, not for the children forced to fight in a never-ending war, not for anyone. But count yourself lucky that unlike everyone else here, you have - had - something that nobody else has. After all, in your first world you had everything. Rebirth OC, Warring Era.

* * *

 ** **Prologue****

Because there is a girl, somewhere, somehow, who disappears from one world and slips through the fingers of death, the afterlife - or whatever it's supposed to be called - and appears in another. She wants to move on from the past, and yet the past is now her present and her future. What she once called fiction has become reality, a fact truer than her own existence.

If this was a book, Naoko thinks, this is how the book would start. The book that describes her life (or rather, her lives?) - oh, her __biography__ , that's what it's called, that's what they would have called it __Before__ \- would start in this manner.

It'd be a book in which people rarely get what they want. It'd be a book in which the real harshness and true horror of the world of many fangirls' and fanboys' dreams is revealed. It'd be a book starting and ending in disparity, and filled with nothing __but__ disparity because that's what her life is - a mixture of only disparity, confusion and despair.

Oh, right.

She has to be optimistic. Even though the world she's living in is a hellhole, even though she did __nothing__ to deserve this, and even though everything is pretty much guaranteed to go to shit because of the time and the world she's living in __(curse Kishimoto!)__ , it could be worse. After all, she could have ended up as __Madara__ \- a disgusting man who ended up destroying everything in order to try and achieve nothing. He obliterated everything and everyone around him. She would _hate_ to be him.

…Not that she ended up much better as a kunoichi living in his generation.

 _ _Well__ , that was a stupid move.

* * *

 **EDIT:** Prologue added 25/07/17.


	2. The Beginning

****Chapter 1****

There is nothing quite right about this world.

They have families with mansions who live hidden, underground and in caves, and these are the same families are the ones who starve to death. These are the ones who look up to me and cry, _'Hime!'_ with their sunken eyes and skinny ribs, although I do not care enough to acknowledge them back.

There are people with magic powers and people who can walk on water. They are the ones who teach the children to fight. They are the ones who send the children out to fight in a pointless war that has lasted since forever.

"My mother's father - your grandfather - lived in the war also. And his father was the head of our clan," says the person that tells me I am her child. "And your eldest brother will inherit the clan after your father."

The person has warm, brown eyes, not unlike the mild ones of a cow, and long and straight, black hair that she keeps in a bun. There are small crows' feet in the corners of her eyes and her tan forehead is slightly blemished with wrinkles, even though she is only twenty-three.

She is called Nanami. It's unsurprisingly unoriginal, as 'nana' means 'seven,' while she is the seventh child in her family and the second youngest, although the only one who is still alive.

She smiles kindly but seems disappointed at my lack of a response when I show no signs of having understood what she has said. I do not particularly care. She does not interest me. I know that getting attached in a world like this, at a time like this, will only give to disappointment and sadness when they die.

I stare back coldly because at this point, there is not much more that I can do apart from gurgle incoherently and crawl a measly five metres. There is not much that I _want_ to do.

"Ah, Naoko-chan, don't look at me like that," she says, chuckling softly as she slowly gets up. I do not reply. Her smile fades as she stands up again to finish cooking. I sit there, watching with a cool gaze as she leaves. As she turns to enter the room that has been dubbed _'the kitchen,'_ she gives me a final glance and a brief smile. I do not smile back.

* * *

Now here is something strange.

There are five people at the kitchen table instead of two. I can't quite place my finger on it, but their identities seem familiar.

At the head of the table sits the man that calls the woman who feeds me his wife. I suppose they are married, and that he is my 'father'. Then there are the two other children; one of which sits next to me, eating his food ravenously, and another who sits next to the man at the head of the table, his head dipped low as he scoops mush into his mouth carefully.

I watch them as the woman scoops the mush into my mouth. I have been upgraded to salty mush now, instead of the tasteless one I had a few months ago. I chew carefully without making a fuss, because even babies like me know that food is scarce nowadays and I care enough to not waste food.

I am skinny enough as it is.

I glare at the other two children. The first one grins as he eats, and he eats as if he has never been fed before. He has choppy, black hair and the same dark brown eyes which are customary of this clan.

This child is one that I am briefly acquainted with; his name is Isamu. I think I remember him as a child. He is nearly three years my elder and has recently started his training. Already there is a bulk of muscle on his arm and he eats with frightening speed.

The second child is Ichiro, someone that I remember slightly more fondly from a few days - or was it weeks or months? - ago. He is five years old and already a warrior.

He has already experienced war, because gone is the childish hope in his eyes, and instead there is only emptiness. This is the one who will inherit the clan after the man who sits at the head of the table.

He also has black hair, although it is slightly longer, but has the brown, mild eyes of the woman who feeds me, instead of the hardened hazelnut of the other child and the man who sits at the head of the table. He has a scar on the left side of his face, which is in the shape of a cross.

The man who sits at the head of the table has a permanent frown and deep-set wrinkles, and he is four years older than the woman who feeds me. His lips are tilted downwards and he glares at anyone he sees. I have never seen him smile before, but then again, he has never seen me smile either.

Once the three year old has finished eating, he is immediately whisked away by the man who sits at the head of the table. I suppose he has to complete his training so that he can fight in the war like the other child.

I do not worry. How could I when these people are only people from a screen? How could I when they didn't really exist? How could I when I didn't even know them in the first place?

We do not have a chance to eat at the table with five people again for another two years. I do not think I care enough to mind.

* * *

Two years is a long time. I am now two years old and the people who call me their child are disappointed that I still have not spoken my first word yet. They have yet to see me crack a smile, and perhaps if I cared, I would actually attempt something. But I don't.

Still, two years later, there has not been much change. People are born, and people die. Each family is encouraged to give at least two or three male children so that they will be able to replenish the stocks of warriors. All male children are trained to fight.

Children here are sent out to fight as soon as they are able to hold a kunai effectively enough. The clan is pumping out children to replace the ones that had died in the war. I suppose they're thinking quantity over quality, something that my English teacher in the Past disapproved of.

Perhaps I should have been glad that I was born a girl in this strange, twisted world. Perhaps I should be grateful that I do not have to fight and kill at the age of five, like both of the other two children.

But really, I can't bring myself to care anymore.

Like an impatient child who has gotten tired of the game, I sigh. I do not cry, because that is, quite frankly, degrading, and my pride wouldn't allow it. But my face is twitched into a furious pout anyway, because now the game has gotten boring.

I want to go home.

* * *

I was thirteen years old when I died.

I was quite well-off, I suppose you could say, before my death. I went to an academically excellent private school that was known throughout the country for its extraordinarily high standards.

I was part of a happy family. There was a large age gap between me and my brother, but we got on together well. My father was the manager of a business company that was successfully growing at a rapid rate. My mother cared for us lots.

Our family wasn't poor, and I had a content life where the worst thing I could imagine was getting less that 80% in an exam, which, in hindsight, is ridiculous.

I had many friends, but only a few that I spent most of my time with, and I managed to juggle playing the piano and violin with schoolwork, where we got two hours of homework a day, on top of seven hours at school, and extra-curricular activities. Oh yes - and anime. Don't forget anime.

So where, you might wonder, did it all go wrong?

It must have been in that one PE lesson where we were running long-distance. I had started coughing non-stop in the middle of it, even though I was fine after I had used my inhaler. It had died away after a while though, so I didn't mind much.

Then soon afterwards, came the uncontrollable coughing and wheezing whenever I breathed in too hard or laughed too much. I passed it off as asthma, because it never really inconvenienced me much.

And then there came the fateful day when we were celebrating the end of the summer exams. One minute, I was chatting and laughing with my friends. The next, I was wheezing and I couldn't breathe and I had blacked out. My inhaler was missing. I hadn't expected to need it. The ambulance was too slow.

What I remember afterwards is a continuous beeping, and then…

 _Silence._

And when the silence came, that's when the pain finally stopped.

* * *

"Brat, shouldn't you have some manners? Why the fuck did you spill the tea? Don't you know how expensive that shit is?!" he snarls at me.

I know that it is because of the death of his best friend and wife. I know it is because of the pressure which is making him crack and the anger he has is anger that he has no-where else to direct it to. I know that it is because the Senju and the Uchiha are too strong and we are too weak and we will die.

But it doesn't make it hurt any less.

Reining my emotions in, I wipe up the mess with the sleeve of my kimono, while the boy who calls me his little sister shakes beside me. The man starts to curse at me because _the boy beside me spilled the tea._

I do not pretend to act apologetic, because I am not. But I cannot watch the boy beside me shake in fear and not do anything. The boy that calls me his little sister holds the teapot in his hands and bows, apologising for me. The man then grunts at him.

"Don't you have better things to do that bully two-year-olds?" I ask coolly. I keep my facial expressions calm and blank, and continue to wipe the carpet with the edge of my sleeve. To anyone else, perhaps this moment could have been worthy of celebration, because after two years of silence and two years of waiting, I have finally spoken.

"Bitch!" he growls back.

To me, though, the only thing that matters is the anger bubbling up in my veins, and the hatred that I cannot control. I stare at him coldly and do not attempt an apology that I do not want to give. I refuse.

"Do not speak to me in that manner!" I spit out. "I refuse to -!"

I flinch, as much as I don't want to, and my hand automatically moves to touch my right cheek. My face heats up where there appears a red imprint in the shape of a hand.

My head snaps to the side. "He hit me!" I shout. "He hit me! Are you just going to stand there?" The boy that calls me his little sister is frozen. I cradle my face tenderly and stare back heatedly, before turning on my heels and storming away, head held high.

Tears do not form, but I am ashamed when I leave. The boy that calls me his little sister finally recalls his senses and follows behind me. When I reach the door, I turn back towards him again.

"Is it because I'm a girl?" I yell, because I know for sure that this wouldn't have happened to anyone else. "Is that why you can treat me like filth? Is that why?!" There is no reply, although his face is now twisted into an ugly snarl.

Somebody else cries, "Hime!" but I ignore them, the non-existent tears blinding me. I know that I am being unreasonable because _his best friend and his wife_ died, but I am still angry and hurt and I am not stupid.

I know that it is not his fault that I am not allowed to train like the other two children or the man who sits at the head of the table. I want to make a difference. I want to be strong, because I know that I will die if I am not.

 _It's not fair._

Why is it that children who do not want to fight must, while children who want to fight cannot? Why can't we choose for ourselves? Why does our gender make any difference to our outcome in life?

"Well fuck you!" I mutter heatedly under my breath as I exit, making sure that they can all hear me. "Fuck all of you!"

* * *

I remember the first time that I saw them. I hadn't cried at the cold, and I hadn't screamed or yelled or shrieked. I stayed curled up in a ball, because if I couldn't see those giant eyes and hands and faces, they couldn't see me. Only, that isn't quite what happened.

I was wrapped in a tight bundle of cloth.

The first pair of hands that held me is not of the person who feeds me. Nor are they the hands of the person who sits at the head of the table. They are soft and hold me tenderly and as if they are used to it. I know now that this was the midwife.

I opened my eyes, blinking blearily at the blurs of colour. My eyesight hadn't been that good before, either, so I was used to it.

 _"Shimura Naoko,"_ I heard, along with giggling from the woman who feeds me. The man who sits at the head of the table for once didn't glare, but did not smile either. He sighed, almost frustratedly, and handed me over to the woman to feeds me again. "It's a girl," he said.

Then there was something grabbing at me, and then there was something yelling at me, which I know now as the two children - my brothers.

The youngest boy next to me gurgled and muttered something that I could not make out. He tried to grab at me but I refused to let him touch me. I could not cry out, much less speak, but with my limited control over motor movement, I managed to wriggle around in the woman's grasp and she scolded the child harshly.

He scowled and his face scrunched up. Then he quickly became bored and wailed something to the man who sits at the head of the table. He was then whisked away, though I did not know why. It was dark, so probably to sleep.

I did not complain when I was picked up and carried away to bed immediately afterwards. The second boy - who I know now as Ichiro - comes upstairs with the woman who feeds me.

She leaves to go tend to the other child, but the second child stays and sings to me a lullaby when he notices that I cannot sleep.

The melody is sweet but his voice is hoarse, undoubtedly from shouting and crying. "Nii-chan can't sleep either," he murmurs to me when he notices that I still lay awake. He sighs when I don't do anything - because aren't children supposed to be aware of their surroundings? - and crawls into my cot.

It is less of a cot and more of a small bed, and he is skinny from malnutrition, so we both fit inside easily. He murmurs a lot to me about the things that he has done and seen. He tells me about what he has experienced of war so far and from close up I could see the rings under his eyes.

He rubs my back and the continuous stream of noise in the background eventually lulls me to sleep. When I wake up, I am alone again, but I do not feel lonely.

I didn't see him for another three months, when he was at war. When I _did_ see him again, he was crying and weeping and holding a dead boy's hands in his own. He flashed a brief smile at me, hiding the tears, then left.

He disappeared again for another five months.

* * *

For my third birthday, there are five people gathered at the table again. I am happy to see that we are all gathered, although I do not understand why.

"Naoko-chan, how do you feel about… training?" the boy who once sang me a lullaby asks. I carefully keep my facial expression schooled and relax my body. No matter what I say, it won't mean anything, and all five of us know it, but I say what I know they want me to say anyway.

I know it will not be training like they train. I know it will be degrading for me and I know that it will teach me nothing other than to be a whore and a fake. All the same, I know it is the only way to quell my thirst for control and power.

"Of course, Nii-sama," I reply. "It would be an honour and a privilege to take on this responsibility for the clan."

I know it is the correct answer when, for the first time in three years, the man who sits at the head of the table smiles.

* * *

The younger boy decides that he wants to show me something. I stand behind him as he leads me outside. It is the first time that I have seen what the outside world looks like. It is night, and the stars are out. I feel peaceful there, even though I know that we are breaking the rules, watching as the boy whips through four hand seals and blows.

The force of the technique blows me backwards, even though I am not in the blast range, and I notice that his energy has sunken to below half.

"I call it the Vacuum Wave, right?" he says, grinning.

I congratulate him, smiling. His beaming face makes me feel happy, and I am caught surprised when I notice how handsome he actually was. He wasn't like Ichiro, with his sunken bones and hollow appearance. He radiated a sort of energy that attracted you like moths to a flame.

The boy with the grin takes me back inside and although we are caught by guards, I do not care. I spend the entire night thinking about him, and even I am surprised at the feeling in my heart.

Once upon a time, I think I might have called it… _warmth…_

* * *

The boy with the grin leaves the next morning, following meekly behind the man with the walking stick. The boy that once sung me a lullaby departs with the man that sits at the head of the table.

They are both off to get stronger.

And now, so am I.

I follow the woman who feeds me. She tells me about chakra, and tells me that I am a natural sensor. She tells me about jutsu, which are what the boy with the grin showed me yesterday. She tells me about strength and loyalty and I nod along, absorbing the information like a sponge.

Now I want to get stronger.

I want to let go of the past _(the things before the beginning)_ and I want to help with the future _(the future that has already been determined)._ I have knowledge _(knowledge comes with responsibility)_ and I intend to use it _(don't raise suspicions)_. The boy who once sang me a lullaby and the boy with the grin will die otherwise.

They don't appear on a page - on _the_ page - and it is frustrating because I know, but I do not know enough. What would happen to the woman who feeds me and the man who sits at the head of the table if I do not use this power?

What would happen to me?

What would happen to my _family_?

* * *

Another year passes and now I am four. The boy who once sung me a lullaby is already nine and the boy who grins is five. They do not come back for my birthday. They are too busy fighting in the war.

I am too busy to celebrate my birthday as well. I am learning how to arrange flowers and speak eloquently. I am learning to sing and dance like an angel, and to play the hocchiku - a bamboo flute - and the biwa - a sort of lute. I am learning how to appear to be gliding when I walk, and how to apply cosmetics and accessories and scents.

I am learning how to manipulate and how to read people, and to use my young age to my advantage. I am learning how to make people love me and I am learning the deepest, darkest secrets of the trade. I am learning, in short, how to be a spy.

It is a nasty work, but it makes me strong.

I am not bad with senbon needles either. I am improving my chakra control to become a medic and I am refining my manners to become a housewife.

It once made me angry. Now I am desperate enough to be happy that I can learn even this. As I quickly understand literature and mathematics, I am hailed as a prodigy, in the basic academic section anyway. I am hardly warrior material.

Little do they know that I am only a fake. And although it hurts me, I can suppress it. I can imagine that I really am Naoko. I _am_ who I desperately want to not be.

* * *

I suppose they call me a sadist. I don't think I could care less.

When the woman who feeds me decides to start showing me techniques for torture and interrogations, I agree immediately. I learn what they teach me with zealousness and absorb the information like a sponge. I am a sponge. I soak up everything they teach me, because if I do not, I will die, and I know it, so despite everything, I am glad at the offer.

I have learnt to read people. I have learnt how to be a spy and an infiltrator. Now I am learning how to break people with the cruelest of techniques. These are the things that Ibiki Morino in the Future-Past will use.

I am learning to become strong.

Perhaps in another world, this would be a trade that I loathed. But I am desperate. This is my trade; this is my specialty. This is the way that I become powerful and this is my own little way of becoming important.

I am a manipulator. This is what I do.

* * *

 **A/N** : Starting a new story. It seems really jerky and vague and confusing at the beginning of this story, but it becomes much more coherent later on as the story progresses. Naoko is kinda cold to others here. This is because she knows that her 'family' are probably going to die and so she doesn't want to become too attached before that happens.

Confusing name/labels: 'Person who feeds me' - her mother. 'Person who sits at the head of the table' - her father. 'Boy with the grin' - Isamu, youngest brother. 'Boy with the lullaby' - Ichiro, older brother.

Reviews, advice etc. appreciated.


	3. Five People

**Chapter 2**

Three. Four. Five.

The years pass, one by one, slowly but surely. In reality, though, none of that matters. In the end, everyone is going to die. The only question is when.

* * *

People expect things from you when you are the only daughter of the Clan Head, when the blood in your veins is purer than pure - when it is the purest in the entire clan. There are expectations held for you, and maybe that is why they allowed me - a _girl_ \- to become a shinobi, because they truly believe that anything is possible for me. They _believe in me._

 _"Tch."_

What nonsense. It's pathetic.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Naoko-chan," she says, beaming. It is my seventh birthday. I crack a smile at the meal that she has prepared for the two of us, because I know it took her all day and all night and I know that she worked incredibly hard for it. I know how hard it must have been financially, especially in the time of the war.

There is a little brown box on the table before me and it is carefully wrapped with twine. The woman who feeds me tells me to open it, and I do.

It is a brooch.

It is a small ring of gleaming silver, decorated with intricate gems and designs of flowers and petals and leaves.

I know what it is immediately; the family heirloom. It is said to protect whoever wears it. I never believed in superstitions, but I smile and thank her readily, and she smiles and laughs back. I am happy here, with them, with her, and I do not want to ever leave.

* * *

It is only know that I know how much I love her. When I screw up, she is patient and kind. When I do well, she showers me with praises. And even though I am a deformed child, a child who is not a child, she loves me.

That is more than I could ever ask for in a world like this one.

* * *

Soon after is when the inevitable finally happens. I have been sheltered from war for long enough, though as long as the fighting didn't affect me directly, I didn't really mind too much.

Now though, seeing the flames eat away at the place where someone once sung me a lullaby and the one with the grin once told me about his new jutsu and where the woman who feeds me once taught me to become strong and where I was once created, I cannot stand there and do nothing anymore.

The man who sits at the head of the table is away fighting with the two other children, somewhere far away from here, so I am glad. But what about the woman who feeds me and the woman who loves me and _the woman that I love?!_

I can do nothing when I catch sight of her running, screaming, calling for help. The other shinobi do the same, because they are cowards and they are scared.

Why did this happen in the first place? These types of things had been warded off for eight years while there was careful planning with the elders and the man who sits at the head of the table and we should be safe and this _shouldn't have happened at all_.

Tearless sobs rack my body as I see the woman who feeds me, crawling away from the Uchiha. With the similar colourings and the heat of the flames, you wouldn't be able to tell who was who and who was on whose side.

 _"Okaa-san!"_ I cry out and try to reach for her, but someone else has now cornered me. I panic and silently, I run through his legs and towards the woman who loves me and the man that she is fighting and losing against.

There are no tears but I still cry, and I stab him _again and again and again._ "Okaa-san, a-are you -?!" Then I look at the person who is covered in red and is smiling back at me.

They stoke a strand of my hair back and tuck it behind my ear, but I cannot move because _why is okaa-san dying?_ I curse myself _(How did you not notice the substitution, stupid!?)_ , and stroke her tear-streaked face again and again to stop her from crying. There is no chance of her survival, but I waste my chakra on healing her anyway.

"No… no…" I whimper, holding her close to me and dragging her along as I run away from the dead bodies. I look around but all I see are red eyes shining in the darkness. "Don't leave me, mama…" Her eyes are glazing over and I realise now that her tears are staining my dress.

There is someone coming towards us, and he throws shuriken at us. I use her body as a shield and wince at the dull thunk as metal hits her flesh.

When he comes towards us I spit in his red eye and hiss, and use the momentary confusion to turn on my heels and run away, carrying the woman that loves me in my arms.

"Be s-strong… my baby… okay?" she whispers, and then… she is gone. I try not to look in their red eyes, and I try to block off the scent of blood and sweat and burning. I try to stop hearing the screams as more and more of my family drop dead, one by one.

The worst part is the fact that I can do nothing.

I gently close her eyes, my fingernails coated with grime, and blood and dirt streaked across my legs and arms.

A little bit of Shimura Naoko dies with Shimura Nanami. There are no flowers around - they are all burnt - and there is no time for a proper burial, but I gingerly lay her on the floor, praying and sobbing silently, tearlessly, then take one last look at the place that I called home and _run_.

There was no funeral for Shimura Nanami.

* * *

It is ironic how the same person that I once cursed for his views on women saved me, mostly because I was female.

When I first see him, recognition flashes in his eyes. He is the first to notice that I am the Clan Head's only daughter, because who can notice details like these when they are busy defending the clan and are fighting and when our enemies look the same as we do in the flames of hell?

I know that if it was the Clan Head's son, he wouldn't have bothered, but because I am a girl and I am the child of the man who sits at the head of the table, he does help.

He leaves behind his own crying newborn son and his four-year-old daughter and, without hesitation, instead picks me up, carrying me like a sack of potatoes as he runs away. He is the one that dies in a few years, the one that I never know.

I sob into his armour all the way, though there are still no tears; only the burden of guilt and shame and hatred.

* * *

There will never be five people sitting at the kitchen table again.

My mother is missing.

* * *

"Are you okay, Nao-chan?" asks the one who once sang me a lullaby.

I smile back instinctively, lips used to forming the shape after years of practice, though we all know that the only smiles I ever pull are fake. "I am fine. Thank you for asking, Nii-sama," I reply, gracefully bowing. Something in that makes him grimace.

"We were really worried, right?" says the boy with the grin, although his grin has disappeared now and has been replaced by a look of worry and anger and sadness. He eyes the brooch pinned on my dress and nods understandingly.

They do not ask what happened, tactfully, probably because they already know. There were only seven survivors in total, it turns out, from our compound: the man that once slapped me, myself, a guard and a young couple with their two children.

"You are safe here," says the man who sits at the head of the table, though his eyes are empty and bleak. He is not quite seeing, not quite believing, not when his daughter killed the woman that he loved and the woman that gave her life.

It sickens me to know that perhaps the woman who once fed me could have survived if I had not stabbed her to death, but I do not let the calm and content facade fall.

I bow and leave the room to enter the temporary hospital, heaving a quiet sigh.

I get to work on healing the injured that came back from the front lines, and the few survivors from the old compound. The two children eye me suspiciously when they see that I am the Clan Head's daughter, and I smile back reassuringly as practiced, even though it is a fake and empty smile. They relax instantaneously anyway.

Word had spread quickly after the incident and we were welcomed into another compound immediately. As it turns out, we were in the main compound, where most of the clan and the most proficient medics and fighters lived.

However, in case of instances like these, they had built five other smaller compounds, scattered around randomly. It took us four days at shinobi pace (while the children, including me, were carried and lugged around everywhere) to reach the nearest of these.

Each of the other compounds contains around fifty people, including shinobi and non-shinobi, while the main compound contained about one hundred or so, including everyone. That meant around a quarter of the entire clan had been wiped out in that skirmish.

Still, it was okay. I smiled at the children (second degree burns must have hurt) as I finished healing them, and then carried onto the shinobi that had been fighting on the front lines.

We have not lost, not quite yet.

* * *

It is now that I suddenly realise that I have to do something. The Senju clan and the Uchiha clan are both too powerful in comparison to us, as was proved when twenty-five Uchiha defeated the entire compound of one hundred men.

If my memory serves me right - and it almost always does - Madara and Hashirama meet when they are ten, I think. If rumours are correct - which they almost always are - these two children should be nearly a year older than I am.

That gives me at least two years before they finally meet.

If they both meet there regularly, they cannot go missing for too long, which means that the meeting place must be near both the Senju clan's main compound and the Uchiha clan's main compound.

There are only two rivers that I would assume to be close enough to either of those.

If we look at which directions the Uchiha came from when they came to attack us, we could hopefully find which direction they came from. If we managed to find that out, I could…

Though it isn't like anyone would ever tell me - a girl and a child, a useless mouth to feed - the locations of any of these places, unless I actually became useful enough for them to give information, like a spy or a fighter or a strategist.

…And that brings us back to step one.

However, hopefully, if I interfere, we could stop this fighting. We can stop people dying meaningless deaths left and right. Perhaps the incident with Okaa-san wouldn't have to repeat itself. Perhaps I could, for once, do something right.

Performing quick calculations in my mind, I know what I must do.

* * *

"Outo-sama, I would like to become an infiltrator," I say. "I promise that I will not disappoint," I add hastily when he gives me a flat look. Surprisingly enough, he does not question the suddenness of it all, and tells me that in six months, if I am still up to it, I will go to where the Senju are supposed to be.

It seems like most of the decent spies have died in __that__ incident - including Okaa-san, who turns out to be one of the clan's best spies since her mother - and they are desperate enough to allow even me to help.

Five months later, I have learnt jutsu after jutsu for torture and interrogations, for genjutsu, and for attacking and disarming. I have completed my training as a medic-nin and I can use that to my advantage with poison and paralysis powders.

I have confirmed all of my skills as an infiltrator and as a manipulator. I am ready, but I do not want to leave just yet.

Another month later, I have been branded with a seal on my tongue. It does not allow me to tell any secrets of the Shimura clan. Another seal allows me to send information to them.

I am only seven, and in another world, perhaps I would be in university and starting my own life soon. But here I am, at age seven, attempting to stop a fictional war in a fictional world.

* * *

"Naoko-hime," mutters the girl beside me. "What an honour it is!" She is perhaps six, a year or so younger than me, though I hear she is already a spy master. Her cheeks are flushed and her sleek, dark brown hair is in a short bob. She is on her knees the second she sees me walk past.

"You are too good, Aimi-san," I reply coolly, the barest hint of a smile on my lips. I cannot bring myself to fully smile at her, because I know that it will be a fake smile, just as I know that she will see through it. We are both fakes, after all, and we both have the same tricks up our sleeves.

I sit at the table as I wait for her to start.

It is our initiation test. The one who loses will lose their life. However, we both know who the winner of this will be.

This test is not a test of strength. It is a test of loyalty; whether or not Aimi will give up her life for the daughter of the clan head. It is a test for me; whether or not I will kill her and erase my emotions, and whether or not I am worthy of becoming an infiltrator for the clan.

As I pour the tea, I slip poison powder into the drink as I hand it to her. She does not notice until she raises the drink to her lips and she falters for a second, but disguises the movement with a short and sweet cough - one that makes me wince, one that sounds a little too real.

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

She smiles charmingly at me and I smile back. It is at this point that we both know that we are done with playing.

There is only one more option now, and that is to fight.

She throws a senbon at me, and I pluck it from the air, whirling it back at her. I dance and weave between the needles and coat them with poison before sending them flying back.

In the end she manages to pin me with a single senbon at the corner of my kimono, but it is enough. More are coming, and I do not attempt to dodge.

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

She walks slowly towards me, and I feel the paralysis powder kicking in. I wave a hand of green chakra over where the wound was first initiated, but scowl when I realise that it has already settled in too much.

It doesn't matter though, because it will wear off in about two hours. I have played with this trinket enough times to know its effects immediately when I use the Diagnostic Palm.

With a flick of my wrist, I send more senbon at her, and with this distraction, cast a genjutsu upon her. It is a simple genjutsu, but one moment of hesitation from her end could be the end of her life. It is all that I need, because I add layers and layers to the genjutsu until she cannot tell the difference between genjutsu and reality.

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

"Tell me… What is the code, _ _Aimi-chan?__ " I whisper to her in the genjutsu.

She breaks free from the first two, and I feel my chakra draining as I struggle to keep her in my hold.

"Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique," I whisper, feeling a little bit of chakra drain as it takes hold of the girl. I scowl when she breaks free yet again, and add another two layers.

She has not told me the code yet. I break her and mend her and break her again. I cannot let her die until I have obtained the necessary information.

In the genjutsu world, I see that she is crying out in pain as I break her metacarpals, one by one, slowly dragging a knife across her neck

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

In the genjutsu, I smile creepily, and each of the reflections is distorted. "Aimi-chan?" I ask, a pout on my lips, my eyes feigning tears as I stab the kunai through her leg again and again and again. " _ _Not even for me?__ " She screams in pain, still trapped in the genjutsu and unable to escape.

I am there for what seems like eternity and smile grimly when she finally escapes all of the genjutsu. She does not look like she will fall for it again; sweat plastering her once beautiful hair to her forehead, and blood from her mouth, seeing as she had been biting it so hard.

She takes a while to recover, but she can only summon up the strength to fling another round of senbon at me. They miss completely.

I take senbon and push them into her pressure points. I stab her again and again and pull out the senbon until there are little holes in her flesh, only to heal them and start again.

She screams and tears out chunks of her hair as I do this. I do not blame her, after experiencing her loved ones die again and again.

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

"Summoning: Torture Chamber," I whisper.

It is the last straw, and her will breaks. I pull and pull at the wire, slowly, slowly, until eventually she stops writhing against the wire. There are thin trails of blood all over her body and I am cutting off her blood supply in all four limbs. I show no mercy until she finally screams out an answer.

"Thank you, Aimi-san," I whisper.

"Hime…" she whimpers at last. I slit her throat for a quick and hopefully painless death. I do not feel guilty when I release her from the pain.

 _ _Beep… Bee -__

* * *

I am a bit like a doll, I should think.

They dress me up in pretty gowns - the clothes of a murderer - and cover my porcelain face with painted smiles and lies and powder, and it is the face of a murderer. They say I am so fragile and weak, made of porcelain, destined to one day shatter and break into pieces.

"Tee-hee!" comes the automated response. It is a chilling sound that resonates bone-deep.

Remember that nursery rhyme about the ten little soldiers? It is the same here. They put me in a dollhouse with a kitchen table and, one by one, they take away each of the other dolls.

 _ _Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;  
One choked his little self and then there were Nine. __

__Nine little soldier boys sat up very late;  
One overslept himself and then there were Eight. __

__Eight little soldier boys traveling in Devon;  
One said he'd stay there and then there were Seven. __

__Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks;  
One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six. __

__Six little soldier boys playing with a hive;  
A bee stung one and then there were Five. __

__Five little soldier boys going in for law;  
One got into chancery and then there were Four. __

__Four little soldier boys going out to sea;  
A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three. __

__Three little soldier boys walking in the Zoo;  
A big bear hugged one and then there were Two. __

__Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun;  
One got frizzled up and then there was One. __

__One little soldier boy left all alone;  
He went and hanged himself __

__And then there were None.__

* * *

"Naoko-chan, be safe, right?" says the boy who keeps on grinning.

"Don't worry about us. We'll be alright," says the boy who once sang me a lullaby.

There are tears in his eyes, but there are none in mine. I cannot bring myself to say farewell, because I know that I will not be able to leave them if I do. I know that they are disappointed that I - a girl - must fight for the clan too, in my own way, and that I - their sister - must leave as soon as she has come to safety.

It is in the middle of the night that I leave, packed with nothing but two ration bars. I take off the brooch, and I panic inside, though I do not dare to show it. There is nothing protecting me anymore.

"I'm sorry," whispers the man who sits at the head of the table.

"What for?" I ask, and give him a soft peck on the cheek. He smiles - a real smile - and his facial features soften, and he tells me that he is proud of me. I smile back as well - a fake smile - but I want to cry.

It is too late now, though. I have made up my mind. I must go for them.

I change my appearance with a genjutsu and imitate the chakra of the Senju - a skill that is known by few and mastered by even fewer.

In the future world, the world on a screen, I know that only a being named Zetsu has this ability. Let me tell you now that it is much more common now than then. Only certain people have this ability, but the people who can do this are a dying breed.

It is all thanks to the skilled and the mastered being sent onto the front lines with the shortage of people. More of these people are dying and dying without proper training. All they can do is change their chakra and dodge and run. They are not trained to fight, so they die.

Perhaps the same thing will happen to me, I think, a frown on my lips.

I take a final glance and smile grimly before departing alone.

* * *

 **AN:** Thanks for all the support, everyone!

This chapter seems... off, still, and I'm not sure about killing someone off in only the second chapter, or the five year gap between the two, but you'll have to bear with it for now. Sorry.

I forgot to mention last chapter that Naoko isn't actually based off of me - her appearance is somewhat similar, but the personality and everything is completely made up, apart from things like her playing the violin and piano and stuff and the (relatively unimportant) minor details.

Also, I'm not sure about replying to reviews. Should I or should I not? I'm not really sure. Would you like that?

School is starting in a week so I'm not going to be able to write much, although I have the first ten chapters mainly written up. Once again, thanks to everyone who has given this story a chance :)


	4. A Necklace

****Chapter 3****

"Who're you?"

"I…" For once in my life, I am speechless. I cannot simply spew out a lie as I have been taught. I cannot simply smile and deflect from the question. I cannot, because this is __the future second Hokage__ that I am speaking to, and even at such an age, he is absolutely __terrifying__.

"You're not from this compound, are you? What are you doing here?" His dark red eyes stare into mine and I cough delicately into my sleeve.

"Eh? Tobirama, don't tell me that you haven't heard about the attack on one of the smaller compounds…" Hashirama whispers loudly. His brother's eyes widen for a second before narrowing again.

The Shimura clan had executed an attack on one of the smaller compounds. There were supposed to be eight survivors, but then there were nine, including me. It was reasonable for them to think suspiciously of me, because nobody had any connections with me and I had no connections with anybody.

"Still, doesn't it seem -?"

"Don't be rude, Tobirama! This is Rina-chan; our father allowed her in! She couldn't be an impostor if Outo-sama didn't sense anything suspicious about her! Besides, her chakra is like ours, Tobirama. I can sense Senju chakra in her!" I nod shyly and back away, letting the boy with the ridiculous bowl-cut do all the work.

Ever the peacemaker, he takes the hint and beams. He pushes me behind him and laughs boisterously before patting me on the back with enough force to knock me over. Still, his brother's eyes are suspicious and narrowed and it feels like they are staring right into my soul.

 _ _He can't really see me,__ I remind myself. __All he's seeing is the genjutsu. He can only see what I want him to see.__

"I-It's a pleasure to meet you, Tobirama-sama," I say, bowing and ignoring his question. My voice is changed - slightly higher than normal to give off an innocent feel. He nods his head curtly but continues staring at me suspiciously until I finish healing his wound. Once I am done, he is led away by his brother to see their father for their training.

"The last patient has been seen to," I state to the woman nearby with blonde hair in pigtails, who eerily reminds me of a future Senju Tsunade. She nods and dismisses me.

I am left alone.

* * *

I hum the melody that was once sung to me by the boy who sung a lullaby as I pack away the things that have been issued to me - two pairs of clothes. The room that has been issued to me is larger than my bedroom in the Shimura compound.

The most striking difference is the fact that nearly everything is carved from wood here, I think.

 _ _I really hate wood__ , I think to myself.

I hate being alone even more.

Perhaps being in the Shimura compound, I was sometimes left to take care of myself for a few weeks or months, but I was always one of __those people__ that everyone knew and everyone talked to, even if I didn't always react with kindness back.

I knew the names of perhaps eight people, including the ones in my family, including Okaa-san, in our clan altogether. That didn't mean I didn't know any others.

There was the woman who always gave me baked goods. There was the boy who always handed flowers to me, before they all got burnt and before he died. There was the man that taught my brothers. There was the girl who sacrificed her life so that I could become stronger.

Being in the Senju compound, I knew nobody. Nobody knew me, and nobody __wanted__ to know me.

I had only met five people by name so far, and this included the Clan Head, two of his four alive children, the woman that dismissed me at the end of the day, and an elder.

The silence was deafening to my ears.

"Hello darkness, my old friend," I sigh as I make the bed. There is no sound apart from the slight crinkling of bed sheets. "I suppose no one dared disturb the sound of silence," I whisper to myself, a ghost of a dry smile on my lips.

* * *

I wonder if they miss me right now. I wonder if my parents are praying for my soul right now, if my brother is a successful doctor, if my friends are alright. I wonder if things would be different if I was there with them.

But do you know what the worst thing is?

I don't remember their faces. 'Mother' is Okaa-san. 'Brother' comes up with the beaming faces of the boy who once sang me a lullaby and the boy with the grin. I do not remember the faces of the people who were originally my parents.

Isn't that a despicable thing?

I always promised that I would never ever forget them; that I would carry them in my heart always. I always promised that nothing could ever replace them, could ever be them.

The dumbest thing is that fictional characters are those very replacements. No, I don't remember how to speak English or French or Chinese. No, I don't remember what people used to call me in the past before the past. No, I don't remember the world I used to live in.

I remember a bunch of useless information from a fictional world. I remember the people that never existed.

When I first came here, I promised that I wouldn't replace 'mum' with the woman who fed me, and I wouldn't replace 'dad' with the man that sits at the head of the table.

I made a promise and I broke it. The only thing that comes to mind is, a boisterous blonde shouting, 'I'm not gonna run away and I never go back on my word, because that is my nindo - my ninja way!' It only reminds me about how I failed __them -__ how the first thing that comes to mind is not about them, or about anything remotely to do with them.

They are the first people that I called my family.

That is why I feel like filth when I think about the man who sits at the head of the table and pray for the woman who fed me. It is why I hate myself when I worry for the boy with the grin and hum the tune that was once sung to me by the boy that sung me a lullaby.

'Home' doesn't really exist anymore. There is the place that I return to at night, and the place that was burned by men with red eyes, and the place that the Shimura live in.

'Home' is a distant, faraway dream that I cannot access. Even if I could, though, I'm not sure that I would like to return.

Even when I could have that safe, happy life where I didn't have to constantly worry about life and death, or where I could eat plentifully and not worry about money, I don't think I would return.

Love… is a queer thing… is it not?

* * *

I am bored. The routine has gotten repetitive. Granted, I have plenty of things to work on, and plenty of things to keep my time. But one can only smile and pour tea so many times.

"I think," I whisper dramatically, "I shall actually die of boredom."

A girl nearby sends me a strange look and I get up again once my break has ended and my shift has started. I enter the room next to this and, with a pile of paperwork in my hands, go to treat the first patient.

I am not yet allowed to treat people in the emergency sector. They have actual Senju for that - ones who rival Tsunade in the Future-Past and ones that can actually do things well enough. They are the ones who bring people back from the should-be dead.

Amongst the Shimura, I was one of the slightly more proficient medics, though I hardly scraped 'decent' with the Senju. Although the Shimura did not have a reputation like the Uchiha for their terrible medics, we were not nearly as proficient as the Senju or other clans that mainly focused on defence.

"Thanks," the man grunts gruffly as I finish up, knotting the bow on the bandage. I smile and stand up to open the door.

As soon as he leaves, another one enters.

The same practised routine, over and over and over again. I really __shall__ die of boredom if I do not do anything, I think grimly, then smile and chat to the next patient.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Rina-chan!"

It is not my birthday, because my birthday is January 18th, and today is September 24th, but I giggle and smile at the three people who remembered Rina's supposed birthday.

"Thank you so much!" I cry as I open the gift. It is a long, turquoise pendant attached to a long coil of black string, with two silver beads on either side of the pendant. My heart sinks when I see it, because I know that it is the Hokage's cursed necklace, but I smile like I have been taught to anyway.

The first person, a boy that works with me and the other medics, beams and ties it around my neck. The second person - the girl that always knew the best gossip in the clan - comments on how much it suits me, and eyes it enviously.

"My father made it for me with some rare crystal. But I never have a chance to wear necklaces when I'm out fighting, so I'm giving it to you," says the man that always seems to end up in the hospital. He grins cheekily in a way that reminds me of Isamu, the boy with the grin.

At that moment, I want nothing better than to throw the necklace back to them and run away, but I smile and chat with them when they cut the cake and force it down my throat.

There is nothing that I want more, in that moment, than to go home.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Hashirama-sama," I say, cold sweat dripping from my forehead under the disapproving glares of our superiors.

 _ _How was I supposed to know when his birthday was? And how was I supposed to know that it was required to give him a birthday present?! Why did nobody tell me this?__

Panicking nervously, I hand the only thing that I can think of that would be suitable as a gift, to him. I press the necklace into his hands and smile shyly before hastily backing away, ignoring the watches of the people who had actually given me the necklace in the beginning.

The boy with the bowl-cut smiles and laughs, though, and thanks me readily for the gift. The boy next to him with the dark red eyes and the white hair raises his eyebrows and there is nothing that I would like more than to disappear through a hole in the floor.

There are two boys next to these - these are the other two sons of the Clan Head - and another man next to them - their father, the Clan Head - and another group of men next to him - probably the Elders and the Council. They are all watching me disapprovingly.

"Ahem," I mutter before disappearing to my room for the rest of the evening, while everyone else is getting wasted for the night.

* * *

Being a fake medic has its perks.

Being part of the defence team, I am allowed to see precious documents that would hardly be available to me otherwise. I could see everything from the structure of the compound with their strategies and escape routes to each individual shinobi with their entire set of medical history and abilities. I now know that somebody really existed like Rina, though not anymore.

There is another person here who does the same thing as me. I do not know their identity, and I most likely never will.

I think I will return soon. I have achieved my goal in finding out where the Senju compound is, and now I presumably know the location of the meeting spot between Madara and Hashirama.

* * *

A year has passed, and now I am eight and a half.

The amount of new information that I have access to has dwindled and now I am probably useless to them. I can go back now, the clan says. I just have to make my - Rina's - 'death' convincing enough.

* * *

On the night of Rina's death, there are fireballs flying everywhere during the attack on the Senju compound. They hiss as the flames turn the night sky as red as the enemies' eyes, and there is barely enough time to find an opening and escape, but it is blocked as I find that there is a shinobi in my way.

"Y-You're not going anywhere," the Uchiha says - a little boy about five years of age, undoubtedly on his first proper battlefield.

"Izuna, above!" shouts another little boy, and I freeze, even though my instincts tell me to run, to run as far as I can and never look back, because it's __Izuna and Madara__ , and then suddenly there comes water roaring from above as Tobirama Senju - __Hashirama's brother__ \- joins the fight, knocking me back.

I stare into his dark, red eyes, and back at the Uchiha, and barely manage to defend myself as kunai whistle through the air towards me, even though Tobirama is doing his best to keep me safe. A __five year old__ is trying to save me from death.

"Go. Run. Heal the injured. Just go __do something!__ " the white-haired boy shouts, and suddenly my chakra level plunges as I use a high-level genjutsu on the Uchiha, even though I know that they will not stay trapped.

With the chakra drainage, my appearance changes back into Naoko Shimura and the transformation disappears. "Who… What did you do with Rina-san?" he asks quietly.

"Nothing," I reply. "I am Rina, and Rina is me. We are one."

I brace myself for the kick, but it knocks me back ten feet all the same, because __this child is not natural__ \- in the same way that I am unnatural. "Who are you?!" he screams, and I am reminded that he is a five year old, a __child__ , and I stagger backwards.

"I'm whoever you want me to be," I reply, and barely manage to escape.

He is a good sensor, but I am better. Nobody but Tobirama notices Naoko Shimura, and in the end, nobody understands what happened to Rina… but me.

* * *

There are multiple changes that I immediately notice when I return.

"Your hair has gotten longer," I say.

"So has yours," the boy who once sang a lullaby to me points out.

"It looks nice," I tell him, a smile barely gracing my lips. It is slight, but it is there.

"Thank you," he replies. Then his expression turns sour and he looks like he is sulking, though I know better than to point it out. "Isamu was fighting on the front lines. Something happened to him and now…"

He trails off and determinedly avoids my gaze. I nod slowly. "He'll be coming back soon. He'll be back in a few days," he says, and I ignore the tears coming from his eyes.

It hurts to know that this thirteen year old has no-one else to turn to than his little sister. I smile comfortingly and lead him to his room, where I chat and try to turn the atmosphere a little bit lighter. It works, I think, but his eyes are still glassy and blank when I leave.

* * *

I knew that the Clan Head's children were going to leave to fight in the war soon, and they would all return in exactly two months' time. Then they would leave again after a week of rest in the compound to fight in a different area.

I found out the locations for where they would be fighting for the next few years at least, as they were in Squadron 6 and there was a regular pattern to where Squadron 6 fought.

By my ninth birthday, they would be fighting near the Senju land and then moving north. Then two months later, they would be in neutral territory. Two months after that, they would be fighting another dangerous clan somewhere to the west. Then finally, they would return and fight near the Senju land again, and the cycle would repeat.

Using common sense, the most plausible time that Hashirama would meet Madara - I assumed - would be the first option, seeing as they went unnoticed, even though they met regularly.

I could only assume that meant it wouldn't be on neutral land, where everything was a huge mess of fighting and killing, because it would be too close to the war, if you looked at the geography of the where the river was.

The third one was unreasonable, because there wasn't even a river near there, unless they somehow wanted to go on a three-hour long hike every single morning at shinobi pace just to go skip stones.

So that means come my ninth birthday, I should be expecting them near the Serpent River, or six months after that, and so on.

I sighed. The maths was screwing me up.

* * *

"You are lucky that you returned when you did," says the man who sits at the head of the table. "There was an attack on the Senju the day after you left. We have reason to believe that the Clan Head's youngest remaining son died in the attack."

I feel a pang of guilt when he says this, because our family is still mainly whole, while I know that everyone else in the Future-Past has barely anyone left.

Then I am reminded of Isamu, and I try to ignore how my heart constricts when I think about what could have happened to the boy with the grin. Even though I have never been the best sister, he always tried his hardest for me.

"That is good news, Outo-sama," I choke out, though it is comes out smoothly and sweetly and I do not struggle with the words at all. Body memory makes me smile at him and bow and keeps my emotions schooled when I want to cry and feel the anger coursing through my veins.

I am almost disappointed by what I said, because I wanted something __more__ from that - I wanted a satisfaction that could not be gained by backing down and acting the mild and docile daughter with a personality to match her name. I feel like I have betrayed Isamu, because __this was not supposed to happen.__

But still, I say nothing.

"You will be returning to your training immediately. I have recruited a specialist to help you," he says, his face stern and sour as always, before softening slightly.

"Good job on your mission with the Senju. I expected nothing less from the Clan Head's - my - daughter. You have served the clan well." A beam breaks out on his face.

"You are allowed a year to rest and hone your skills before your next mission." As an afterthought, he says to me, "I am proud of you." I smile like I was taught to - charmingly -but he doesn't notice how forced it is when I plaster it on my face.

"Thank you, Outo-sama," I reply. "It has been a great honour," I tell him, and leave the room.

* * *

Half of his face has been burnt off and he cannot open one eye. His left leg is completely crushed. His arm has been amputated and there remains a stump in place of his fingers. "I'm fine, right?" he says, grinning.

I shake my head and carefully replace the bandages on his face. It takes everything to keep back the wince at the charred flesh that is hanging from what should be his face.

"At least this way you won't have to fight anymore," I tell him.

"Yeah…" he says softly. "I'll never be able to fight again, well, not like I used to." His eyes dim and I realise how much it all meant to him. To be able to fight, for him, was to be able to __live__. He needed it as much as he needed the oxygen in the air.

I rock his wheelchair backwards and forwards and take him outside when he asks me to.

I can see that he tries his best to ignore the stares of others. They are judging him. __Useless__ , they think. __Weak. Pathetic.__

I do not know why it is me who bears the hatred in their heart, when he is the one that is used as a scapegoat. I cannot bear the way that they look at him. The malice seeps through my voice when I speak about his injuries.

"How did this happen to you? Tell me who did this to you," I growl.

"Nobody, Naoko-chan. It was because of my own carelessness, right?" he replies. I cannot understand why he keeps that silly grin on his face when he is clearly suffering, why he does not let me avenge him.

"Here's your brooch, by the way," he says as he pins the silver petals onto my dress. "If it wasn't for that, I probably would've died, right? Thank you."

Somehow the rage in me subsides when he laughs and calls me constipated and too mature for my age. I cannot bring myself to tell him that he is barely older than I am, and is already wise like an old man, or tell him to stop being so positive.

"Right, Nii-sama," I reply softly, and I give him a small, but real, smile. He smiles back.

* * *

 **AN:** Hello. Yes, it's me. I'm currently exhausted, and school has just started so I have had much less time to write. This chapter is just... bleh. Actually, all the chapters I have written so far (up to 11) are bleh. They're all just bleh.

Thanks to anyone who has supported this! Please tell me what you would like to see in later chapters, also, because sometimes I just... meh.

Bye!


	5. Peace

****Chapter 4****

"Hiroshi-sensei," I say as I bow gracefully with practised ease. I look at my opponent - the thirteen-year-old boy who is my sensei and has already made a name for himself in the war - with dread and panic, masking it carefully with a cold smile.

The boy smiles back - uncertainly, unwillingly - and scratches the back of his head, though the terseness in his muscles give away the fact that he is still cautious, always cautious. I notice a long, thin scar trailing the length of his neck and it only makes me panic further.

"Begin!"

Immediately, ruthlessly, relentlessly, he bursts into a bout of taijutsu, and I am knocked backwards and into the wall with a kick. Having learnt my lesson, I throw senbon at him when he tries to come closer again. They are covered with paralysis powder.

He dodges them easily and I try to cast a genjutsu, though he is too fast and I am slammed into the ground with humongous force. I am pretty sure that he has already broken at least one bone in my body.

I roll away to dodge the coming blow, and scramble onto my feet, hands already forming seals. He is too fast. I am already on the ground. I cannot feel my limbs.

"Tch," says the boy - my sensei, a look of disdain clear on his face. I whimper when he presses a foot into my back as motivation for me to get up, knowing that by tomorrow, my body will be littered with bruises.

I do not complain. I cannot complain. The training is hard, but I know that I am improving. I can hold my own against nearly all children my age now.

I slowly stand up, ignoring the pain, ignoring the hurt. Instead my hands form a single handsign and my chakra is cut off by half immediately. I feel the drain of chakra when there appears a single Shadow Clone next to me.

I thrust poison powders and paralysis powders at my opponent while my clone starts to forms the seals for a genjutsu.

The boy disappears and attacks me, and I dodge his initial blow and duck under his next one. I dodge and defend, stalling for my clone to finish the genjutsu.

It doesn't happen. It bursts into smoke as soon as the boy realises what I am doing, but I form the same seal again, and there appears another clone.

I do not have enough chakra for this technique though.

I cannot hold the clone for much longer, and it disappears in a poof of smoke. One second, I am I am watching the boy with a cautious eye, and the next, everything turns black.

This is how I learnt to hide and run away, how to utilise Earth chakra and how to track. It's how I learnt to hide my trail and to survive on the land. I absorb the things he teaches me like a sponge. I need to be strong, and what better way than to learn what others are willing to teach me?

* * *

"You're slow," he says. I hold a pack of ice to my jaw and my back. I nod, wincing at the pain that shoots through my body.

"You're not too bad at genjutsu, and you're decent with senbon, but your taijutsu is horrible, and you can't do much with ninjutsu. I guess your chakra control is okay, but you can't even handle one Shadow Clone for more than two minutes.

"Although you are a master, even for your age, when it comes to manipulation and deception, you are hardly up to standard with your fighting. Although you are technically a medic, you are simply not good enough when it comes to actual __fighting.__ All in all, I'd say your performance was poor."

I nod ashamedly.

"I'd tell you to work on your stamina. That's probably the most important part. I used to run up and down the Serpent River, up until the cave at the other end, five times each morning as well as my other training. But I'm not sure if you'd be able to handle that… Not to mention the chance of meeting enemy shinobi… although that could be counted as training…"

I raise an eyebrow at his overestimation of my abilities but do not say anything. He laughs at my expression, and I cannot help but smile back.

"In six months, when you have had adequate training, you will start a routine of running up and down the Serpent River five times every morning. We will have to make sure you are up to it though," he thinks out loud. "I'll also have to get your father's permission. It has more to do with your motivation though, if you -"

"I'll do it," I cut in hastily. "I will start on my ninth birthday." He doesn't comment on my eagerness, but little does he know: that is when I am likely to meet Hashirama and Madara.

"Alright then. It's settled," he says, and I nod back. He ruffles my hair, to my disdain, with a smirk on his face. "Good job today," he says, and I blush.

"It's settled."

* * *

"Naoko-chan, how about I teach you some jutsu, right? First up is the Tearing Earth Turning Palm! Don't worry if you don't get it on your first try!" he says when I pout after failing on my first attempt… and second… and forty-sixth.

"How many goes did it take for you to master it?" I ask him.

"Three," he replies gleefully. "It was easy."

I hang my head. "I'm giving up."

* * *

I do not pass anyone or anything on the journey there or back, or the four ones after that. While it meant that I didn't see any enemy shinobi and I was safe for the meantime, it also meant that I couldn't find two of the very people that I was looking for.

"It would be so much easier if I knew where Madara was…" I muttered under my breath.

Taking a map from the drawers, I noted down the areas along the river where one would be able to hide easily. There were too many options for me to thoroughly search through, though. It would be impossible to find their meeting place.

"So here is where the Clan Head's eldest son is currently fighting!"

Crouching behind the back wall of the room where the Elders were discussing tactics, I shut my eyes to try and listen in. There were no privacy seals - or any seals at all - so I could hear what they were saying easily.

 _ _Well, that was bloody convenient, not to mention anticlimactic.__

* * *

Hashirama has never really felt the emptiness swallow him up as much as it has now.

The death of Kawamara really left a hole in his heart and he cannot stop feeling the constant fear of death anymore. Always lurking, always watching, death is always hiding and waiting. Hashirama can't shake the feeling off anymore.

 _"_ _ _This world of shinobi is definitely wrong!"__

He can't let this go on. He can't let this endless fighting, this pointless and ceaseless cycle of fighting and dying, go on.

* * *

"Nii-sama, surely you are not leaving already?" He nods and there is a bittersweet ache in my chest. Geared up in his armour, he looks like the first time he left for war, or the first time that I remember him leaving for war.

He doesn't look like a child. He looks like he has grown up too quickly, and he has. Like Isamu, he has had to suffer losses at a young age. He has had to experience things that would have never happened to a child of fourteen in the time before the beginning.

I feel numb when I pin the silver brooch onto the inside of the undershirt. It is cool against my fingertips, which are hot and sweaty after training.

 _ _Be safe__ , I tell him wordlessly through my actions.

 _ _You too,__ he replies in his nervous smile. His shaggy hair is tied up in a ponytail, and his mild, brown eyes - Okaa-san's eyes - look at me fondly. The scar on his face does not stand out as much anymore, but he still looks like the life has been sucked out of him.

He always has and somehow, I think he always will.

"Our father will be staying this time. He will not be leaving the compound for a while. He'll protect you," says my brother. "You don't need to worry. He'll protect you. Isamu will protect you. We'd all protect you with our lives." I smile at him, but do not speak my thoughts.

 _ _But who will protect you?__

* * *

Madara knows that something is wrong when he feels the prickling on his neck that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and constantly __gnaws__ at him with an itching irritation that he can't get rid of, no matter what he does.

He knows that Hashirama can feel it too. His muscles have tensed up - if only for the briefest, slightest moment - but he notices it, like he notices the way that his eyes narrow the tiniest amount. It goes unspoken, but they both feel it, and a mutual agreement passes between the two, even when they both continue to skip stones and laugh like nothing has happened.

 _ _Be on your guard,__ he is warned. He doesn't need it, but doesn't ignore the order. He was on his guard anyway.

All of a sudden, there is the slightest sound of a leaf being shaken, and then a hitch of breath followed by a quiet - almost silent - curse, and it is on pure instinct alone that he releases the large, flat stone from his hand.

The half a second that it takes to connect is all that he needs to jump away and start the seals for a jutsu. Then it is canceled out when Hashirama stops him, hand firmly held up as a warning, and he notices the slumped body of the enemy on the floor by him.

"What are you doing?" he hisses to the boy next to him. "The enemy is here!"

"Think, Madara!" the boy next to him hisses back, none too quietly. "If they were knocked unconscious by a pebble, they can't possibly be a shinobi. Wasn't it a little bit __too__ easy?"

He turns to the enemy, and true enough, they were clearly not shinobi, if their long hair, tied up in pretty ribbons, the smooth and relatively uncalloused hands, and the body that was not littered with scars and bruises were anything to go by.

He scowled and crossed his arms and turned to the boy next to him for advice. "Well?" he asked. "What do we do with them now?"

He nudged the person with his foot as Hashirama groaned and held his face in his hands. "I don't know… What do people normally do with people that they knocked unconscious? I'm training to be a medic, but I'm not good enough to try anything without supervision yet…"

They both knew that by following proper procedure, they should have tried to have gotten rid of the person, especially since their chakra signature, now visible, held no similarity to anybody that he knew.

However, they couldn't just leave a civilian here, as people would be sent to investigate the area, and as stupid and selfish as it sounded, neither Madara nor Hashirama particularly wanted to have to find 'a new spot.'

"So, do we just… wait?" Madara asked lamely.

"I guess so…" Hashirama replied, shrugging.

* * *

Despite the age gap, I had a better relationship with my brother in my previous life than I had with any of the current ones that I had.

Sometimes it became too painful when I looked at Isamu or Ichiro, because the resemblance between Nii-sama and my brother was clearly there, in the same way that I looked like I did in the time before the beginning.

I never understood why Okaa-san taught me to use my young age to my advantage, or to use my appearance to manipulate people, because when I looked at myself, I didn't see the face of a child, and neither did anyone else.

The pouty lips and chubby cheeks should have added a cuteness to my face, but instead enhanced the permanent sneer and glare from my narrowed eyes, which I blamed entirely on Otou-sama.

The harshly rugged way in which my face was chiseled out gave a decidedly un-cute aura, and in general I just didn't look like a nine year old girl. The suspicious acuteness of my awareness would have been suspicious, had I been anyone else.

But I didn't have to look at myself.

I had to look at __them__ though, and it hurt when I did.

I tried to lift my head, and opened my eyes slightly. There was a searing pain in my head, though if I concentrated, I could ignore it. I could see two figures, one of which was the boy with the ridiculous bowlcut.

"N-Nii-sama?" I asked, words blurring into each other as another throbbing pain overtook my head. I reached my hand out at the other boy, the one with the black hair and black eyes.

"Not Nii-sama," he corrected, not unkindly.

"O-Oh," I replied, though my head was still throbbing and I whatever he had said went in one eye and straight out the other. I blinked to try and get everything to come into focus.

"I've been looking for you…" I said, words coming out slurred. I clutched my - still throbbing - head. Why was everything spinning? I shut my eyes wearily. I felt nauseous. Whatever they had done to me was clearly working.

The black-haired boy sighed exasperatedly while the other one - the boy with the ridiculous bowlcut - chuckled nervously, clearly unsure about what to say in response to my stalker-ish words.

"No, s'rsly… stop… I know you…" I said, trying to sound reasonable or at least sober, and most likely failing. I opened my eyes again and pointed to the boy with the black hair. "You're Mad, and he's uhh… Hash'ra…"

I tried to focus healing chakra to my head in an attempt to stop the headache. "And I'm Alice… no! No, forget what I just said… I'm Na...Nu… uh… something like that…"

* * *

"It took you an entire four hours to run five laps?"

"…Yes, I should think so."

"Why did it only take you one and a half yesterday?"

"…"

"You have been neglecting your training, then?"

"…"

"I am leaving to fight in the war tomorrow, Naoko-chan… I cannot…"

"…"

"Starting from tomorrow you will double the amount of time you train, on top of the five laps, which you will now complete with weights. I am disappointed in you, the Clan Head's daughter."

"Yes Sensei."

He sighed and placed a hand on my head, smiling fondly. "You're a good kid, Nao-chan. Please don't disappoint me again."

* * *

"Hime! " I turn around to look at the person that cried out my name. He chuckles and walks towards me. There is a flower in his hand. "Hope you haven't forgotten me, have you?" he asks, and I smile. It has been over a year.

"Of course not, Jirou-kun. Have you been well?" I reply, smiling. I pluck the flower from his hands and we walk towards my house.

"I have another little sister now, Hime," he tells me. The pride in his eyes is unmistakable, and I wonder if my brothers ever thought about me in the same way that he Jirou does now. We round a corner and I cannot help but feel disappointed as my house comes into sight. "We named her Naoko, after you," Jirou says finally.

I suck in a breath and beam at him. "It is an honour. Please give your parents my congratulations," I reply genuinely before entering the door of my house. "Goodbye, Jirou-kun." He waves goodbye and turns around to hurry away.

* * *

"It doesn't matter…"

"Just spit it out."

"R-Really… It's nothing…"

"We'll be here all day if you keep refusing so you might as well -"

"Don't worry about it…"

I sighed quietly but smiled meekly, like I was taught, sitting down in a crouch next to him. "What's wrong?" I asked in a lighter tone, in contrast to my usual harshness. "I mean… Well, even Madara can tell something's up with you, and he's as dense as a tonne of bricks."

The Uchiha's eye twitched but he didn't say anything about it.

There was silence for a minute before the other boy - Hashirama - finally spoke. "My little brother… was killed." There was a tone of tired resignation in his voice. It was the last thing that I wanted to hear from a child.

"I always come here when I feel like this… All these emotions bottled up inside of me… I feel like the flow of the current can wash them all away." He laughed silently, though the sound held no mirth to it. "Do you have any siblings?" Hashirama finally asked.

"Y-Yeah…" I admitted. "I have two brothers." I smiled, thinking about them. __You're lucky that they're still alive. You're lucky that they don't know.__

The smile disappeared immediately. I knew that the death of one of Hashirama's brothers had been my fault - my fault, because I had been the one who gave away the Senju's information. I had been the one that had allowed this to happen.

The worst thing was that I couldn't even muster up the guilt. After all, it was only another death. It was their job, and he would have died anyway.

It was only another Senju to me. It was someone that would have killed __my brothers__ instead, if I hadn't allowed his death. In the end, I was only protecting the people that I cared about, and seeing Hashirama's tear-streaked face wouldn't change that. Nothing would.

"I have four brothers," Madara said at last. "Or rather, I __had__ them."

"But… That's what it means to be a shinobi… Death is always knocking on our door. From what I can tell, the only way we can avoid that is to be upfront and honest with the other side… Perhaps even, I don't know, form an alliance with them!" he exclaimed. "And then there might finally be peace!"

I was strangely reminded of an old world - somewhere where death wasn't always looking over your head, where there didn't have to be any fighting. It was a place where people didn't __have__ to fight in wars, where children weren't raised to become killers.

I really did know a place like that, I think to myself, but even I found it hard to believe that, somewhere, something like that could really exist.

But at the moment the idea seemed so far away, so distant, even though I knew it could happen. I was determined to __make__ it happen.

"Maybe… maybe it's not as far-fetched as you think," I said softly, smiling in a sweet and kind way that __made__ you like it. "Yeah… One day, I'd like to go somewhere like that, with you guys, and we can all live like that. In peace…"

* * *

 **Sorry for the long break between the chapters. I haven't so much as looked at this for three months, so apologies if there's some sort of dissonance between the earlier and later chapters. I haven't exactly worked out the details for where the story's going to go but I'll try to keep the story quite short and about fifteen chapters maximum.**

 _If you have any ideas please send them via PM!_

 **Thanks to everyone who has supported and if you haven't, please follow or favourite or post a review! Thanks!**


	6. Hard Work and Determination

****Chapter 5****

Ichiro's return was probably the only reason that the nurses allowed Isamu outside. He has gotten a prosthetic arm instead of the stub that used to remain. He cannot perform most fine motor actions, such as eating with chopsticks, but it is much better than not having an arm at all.

The bandages on his face have been removed and although there are scars which are a constant reminder left behind from the battlefront, most of the injuries have healed nicely, though one of his eyes - his crushed one - is covered with an eyepatch.

I am grateful, however, because something worse could have happened. I am grateful that both of my brothers and alive, at the very least.

But although he was better, he still wasn't able to fight on the battlefront, which I was glad about.

He still couldn't run without his left leg, and was therefore deemed useless as a fighter. He couldn't even perform hand seals without control over his prosthetic arm and hand, but I knew that he was slowly - slowly but surely - training to become stronger.

Nevertheless, as a 'cripple,' he still needed special permission to leave the compound.

After six months by himself, our older brother was finally returning from the war. He had made a name for himself on the battlefield, I heard.

And so, my brother and I, and his friend and our father, and the girl that Ichiro liked (a fact that he refused to admit) all stood by the compound, waiting for the war heroes to return. We waited for an entire day before they came into sight.

"Nii-sama!" I cried, seeing a familiar figure coming towards us.

Within an instant he had disappeared and then re-appeared next to us from a distance of over a hundred metres away. Then he placed his hand on my arm and we disappeared and appeared again inside the compound.

"N-Nao-chan..." he whispered, his eyes glassy and weary. "He's dead… Hiroshi Sensei, __your sensei__ , is dead!"

 _ _He sighed and placed a hand on my head, smiling fondly. "You're a good kid, Nao-chan. Please don't disappoint me again."__

"W-What?" I whispered. "But h-he was so strong! Who killed him? How could he have died? W-Who'll teach me? H-Hiroshi Sensei…"

 _ _I raise an eyebrow at his overestimation of my abilities but do not say anything. He laughs at my expression, and I cannot help but smile back.__

I almost want to laugh. It is ridiculous. I was never that close to him in the first place, but I could feel my body shaking with anger. A calm, silent anger swept over me as I felt the silver brooch being returned.

It didn't matter though. It didn't matter, because he was only a __filler character__. He wasn't important. The man that taught me everything that I knew was now dead and he wouldn't get a funeral because he __wasn't important enough__.

"Who was strong enough to kill him?" I ask, snarling, my voice straining to control my emotions.

He was only a few years older than I was. He was only a child, and it was __so wrong__ in my mind, and yet I knew that I couldn't let his death touch me.

It was insignificant.

That was probably the first time that I can really say that death didn't bother me anymore. It was a part of the life that I lived, and I knew that realistically, many deaths - including the death of Hashirama's brother - was probably indirectly my fault.

"Well, who'll teach me then?" I asked, controlling my emotions carefully. He compresses the look of sympathy from his eyes as he notices that I have gotten over Hiroshi Sensei's death.

"I suppose I could try and convince my old teacher, Daisuke Sensei…" he replies slowly. "I can try, but if he doesn't take you in, you won't have a teacher. There's not many other people that would accept a… a girl as their student."

"So if this fails, I'll just have to try and get stronger on my own then," I say, reading between the lines. "Because if he doesn't want me, then nobody does - just because I am a girl!"

"Well, yes," he admits.

"Oh, well that's just great, isn't it? That's just bloody fantastic!" I laugh sarcastically.

* * *

The man who teaches - taught - my brothers stands before me. He is stern-looking and walks with a limp. He has bandages wrapped around his arms and legs and he can be no younger than fifty, a ripe, old age in the time of the Warring Era. The way his beady eyes look at me reminds me of the Danzo in the Future-Past.

I stare back at him, challenging him. He ignores me. After all, how do I matter? I am just another mouth to feed, another disobedient child that will one day die. I am the Clan Head's daughter and although I am useful to this clan, I am only a girl.

He commands me to show him what I can do. This is the man that told me that __no, nobody cares__ , the man that showed me that __your brothers are better than you__ , and perhaps they are, but it does not make me feel any better, if that is what he is hoping to achieve.

I show him my taijutsu and it only takes a second for him to scowl disapprovingly and tell me to move onto ninjutsu. He is disappointed, though not surprised, when I show him the only two jutsu that I know that are not related to torture and interrogations. My genjutsu and senbon skills impress him, though it is nothing that he has not seen before.

"What am I supposed to do with you? You are a waste of my time. No matter what I teach you, in the end you will still be only adequate. Unlike your brothers, you have no natural talent in pure combat," he says.

"As you know, Hiroshi Sensei went to fight in the war and died, and I am supposed to be his replacement for the moment. However, I will not take in a student who cannot even fight close combat!"

I do not reply and carefully do not make any indication towards my emotions, which could be taken as a show of weakness, of vulnerability.

I do not let him know that I am dying inside, because __I know that I am useless__. Yet I was brought into this world to… to change things. And now he is telling me that I am not good enough for it, and I know it is true, but I do not show him that I know.

After all, the only thing that he has done is tell me that I am worthless, but that is something I have always known.

* * *

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" the boy with the bowl-cut notes. He sits down next to me and idly plays with the pebbles on the floor, running his fingers through the damp dirt.

"Mm," I affirm. "It has been over three months since our last meeting."

"Where's Madara?" he asks.

"I wouldn't know," I lie easily. I know very well that he is currently fighting in the neutral territory and that we will not see him again for another two months at least. I just do not care to tell him.

"Well it's been good seeing you again, Nao-chan," he says, laughing boisterously. I do not laugh with him.

"Likewise," I return dryly. I sigh and stare into the river. The reflection is of a girl with a permanent scowl on her face. I smooth out my features and plaster on the smile that I always wear. "You're good at fighting, Hashirama, right?" I ask softly.

"H-Huh? Haha! I guess you could say that!" he laughs nervously, and I smile.

"Could you teach me how to fight?" I requested. He looks surprised at my request and it shows on his face. I do not take my gaze off of him and instead try to pressure him into helping. He scratches the back of his head.

"Why would you want to learn to fight? You're a civilian, aren't you?" he asks, flustered, and I roll my eyes at him. There was no doubt that with the guise that I had been putting him, he wouldn't have guessed unless I told him. After all, I fooled him into thinking that I was one of his own once, and I could easily have done it again.

I am aware of the fact that if I do not tell him, he would refuse. I smile at his naivety. "I am indeed a kunoichi, Hashirama," I say amusedly, letting go of the soft facade and letting my crass nature through. "Although I do not look like it, I can fight."

"Well, of course…" he mutters. He looks astonished at the fact that I - a girl - could be a fighter.

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, I do not slack off when it comes to training. Indeed, I train as hard as I can and push myself to the best of my limitations. I only meet up with Hashirama and Madara after I have finished running the five laps.

And I see results most of the time. Underneath my clothes and skin is an, albeit thin, layer of hard, lean muscle that I have earned after years of training for hours on end each day, which is proof of that. The countless bruises and scars that litter my body I hide effortlessly with cosmetics like I have taught to, but they are still there.

Sometimes though, when you look at people like Hashirama and Madara, you notice how useless, how weak, you really are. When you see people who can wave a finger and destroy a clan just like that, it really damages your ego.

When you are lying on the floor in a crumpled heap while your opponent - a boy who is only a year older than you are - isn't even out of breath yet, or hasn't even attempted using any jutsu while you have already used up your entire repertoire of tricks, it really damages your pride as a person.

"A-Ah," I say in reply when he laughs at how ridiculously easy it was to defeat me. My body will be black and blue tomorrow. There is no doubt about that. "And you were g-going easy on me?" I sigh in defeat.

"Don't get me wrong, you're… good… at fighting," he chuckles. "I'm just better!" My eye twitches and it takes all of my self-restraint and running through all the lessons that my mother once taught me, in order to not blow up at the insult.

He offers me a hand and I grab onto it with no energy left. "Are we doing this again tomorrow?" I ask weakly. I sit up and begin to heal myself.

"Well, probably not. Today I just wanted to test your skill level. Tomorrow I'll try to fix all those rookie mistakes you make when you fight," he says.

"Gee, thanks…" I mutter under my breath, but I didn't mean it. Just after this one torture - ahem, _ _training__ \- session, I could already see noticeable differences within my fighting. I had already improved. I smile and bid farewell to him before going on my way home.

 _ _He'd be a great Hokage someday.__

* * *

Sometimes she wonders if it is bad that she and her father are not close. Of course there were the few, occasional moments where he bothered to smile or praise her, though of course she knew that she could never take the place of either of his sons, if anything should happen to them.

Isamu, the boy with the grin, was the handsomest out of the three children. The scars and wounds that he had, took nothing away from his natural radiance. He was good with people - social and amicable, with his presence always welcomed - in a way that the other two were not. People would throw away their lives for someone like him.

Though he lacked true wisdom, he more than made up for it with his charm and tact. He was best with politics and social situations, whereas the other two were simply… awkward. It was in this manner that he had wormed his way into her cold and guarded heart.

Ichiro was the clan heir. He was the boy that once sung his little sister a lullaby to sleep, and the one that locked himself away in his room for days on end, only to have mastered a new technique or come up with an idea for a fighting tactic. He was calm and logical when Isamu was passionate and stubborn.

He was the one that had made a name for himself in the war at the age of only 14, had wiped out clans with his ruthless tactics and deadly precision, who had most certainly _ _deserved__ to become the next Clan Head. Although he lacked grace and charm, and looked rather gaunt, he tried hard and he got results.

He was the pride of the Shimura Clan Head - the boy, no, the __man__ \- that everyone looked up to and wanted to be like. And his right hand man would be his brother, the 'glue,' the person that would keep the clan together.

…Oh yes, and then there was the daughter.

Yes, she was a master manipulator and spy, and she would likely grow up to be a decent wife. Only, there was nothing that she __was__ that her brothers __weren't__. There was nothing… __special__ about her.

To an extent, she was a prodigy, in her own way, but many other medics could throw senbon with the same chilling precision as her, and could tell you the difference between cocaine and harmless powdered sugar, just by looking at them.

Many other spies could manipulate people and make them reveal their deepest, darkest thoughts like her, could twist their thoughts by simply smiling at their enemies. And many other housewives could sing sweeter than her and were much, much prettier.

She wasn't Ichiro, who had earned the respect of all, and she certainly wasn't Isamu, who was beloved by all within the clan. She was just… there.

"Though perhaps, you know, being 'just… there' doesn't have to be a bad thing," she says with a dry smile on her face.

"Oh? Is that so?" the unamused Elder asks in a very slightly mocking tone, lifting her delicate brow slightly. "Please explain for me, dear. Typically people like you seek recognition."

The girl pins the smile in place, carefully not snarling at the insult. Yes, she is the Clan Head's daughter, but people could care less, including her father. Not that she minded. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

"I suppose it just makes it easier for me to kill you all in your sleep…" she returns coolly with no amount of regret or remorse. It is a dangerous game to play with someone of such great importance to the clan, and she is already sitting on the very brink of the fence, but she continues to push. "Tee-hee."

The Elder suppresses a shiver and impassively continues knitting. "That mouth of yours will get you killed, child," she says.

The girl lets out a short, startled laugh. "I have been told so before that my tongue is sweeter than any, Elder-sama, so I shall have to disagree with you there," the child says, her smile borderline creepy. "On the contrary, perhaps it will be my mouth that keeps me alive."

* * *

She is sent on another mission to gather information about a clan that has recently emerged and is growing steadily. It takes her all of ten minutes to get ready by giving her silver brooch to Ichiro, who has also been sent on a mission, though he is going to the front lines of the war, and packing her small bag with the essentials and nothing more.

 _ _The bad thing about the brooch__ , she thinks to herself, __is that it can only protect one person at a time. I can only pray that Isamu will be fine.__

She can pack her weapons this time. It is a short-term mission and she will not have to act under a disguise, although it means that there is a higher risk of a fight.

In six days she arrives at the compound. There are guards stationed around the entirety of the building, which she notes down as an amateur mistake for a novice clan. Unless you were strong enough to defend yourself, it was not a good idea to __show__ others the location of each and every one of your compounds.

"Kai," she mutters under her breath to release the genjutsu. If she hadn't noticed it in time, she would have walked right into the trap and set off the explosives. "Kai," she says again to get rid of the second layer. She cannot detect any more genjutsu, so she continues.

All she needed to do was to grab the scroll locked inside a room in a particular location at the back of the compound, memorise the information, then relay the information back to the clan. Hopefully, if all went well, she could be back home in a week.

Getting out from the Hiding Like a Mole technique and emerging from the dirt, she quickly suppressed her chakra and her breath. "Hiding With Camouflage Technique," she whispered, and her entire body became invisible. She flexed her arm muscles, getting up from her crouch, and __ran.__

The training with the weights had been useful. Now she is much quicker on her feet and more agile than before, and the strength of her legs had increased exponentially.

She managed to get inside the compound, but chakra sensors immediately noticed her presence. She escaped the multiple traps by the breadth of an hair, but she continued running.

"Idiot! Why didn't you change your chakra signature?" she hissed to herself as her body slowly starting to appear once again. She couldn't have kept it held for too long because the technique was more useful on the way back.

She dodged the weapons flung at her on pure instinct, occasionally using her own weapons to deflect them to where they came from. As her lower torso began emerging, she pushed herself to continue running, to continue searching, even as she began to get out of breath.

"The border's been breached!" one of the shinobi yelled. All of a sudden there were bells ringing and then her __ears__ started ringing as shinobi after shinobi leapt in her way. She dodged between them all, running towards the room at the back of the compound where the scroll was said to have been.

Her heart sunk to see that rows of shinobi were already forming, protecting the room. They were all targeting her and she was cornered.

One of the shinobi charged at her with a gleaming tanto in hand. She was forced to block with a kunai, leaving herself open at the back. She jumped upwards and clung to the ceiling with chakra.

"Damnit, I don't have any offensive techniques…" she mumbled angrily to herself. Scanning through previous memories for techniques that had been shown to her before, she finally landed on a single one.

 _"_ _ _Naoko-chan, how about I teach you some jutsu, right? First up is the Tearing Earth Turning Palm! Don't worry if you don't get it on your first try!" he says when I pout after failing on my first attempt… and second… and forty-sixth.__

 _"_ _ _How many goes did it take for you to master it?" I ask him.__

 _"_ _ _Three," he replies gleefully. "It was easy."__

 _ _I hang my head. "I'm giving up."__

"Tearing Earth Turning Palm!" she shouted, and the first row of the enemy gets sucked into the dirt floor, each of them crushed under the weight of the dirt above them. Shock was visible on her face when she completed the hand seals.

Leaping through the air with a determination that was not there before, she managed to find a barely noticeable weakness in the formation and exploit it.

She charged in that direction, sucking her breath in as another chakra-enhanced tanto grazed her skin with a large gash appearing. __Deal with it__ , she told herself as she deflected another of those stupid swords, hissing as a kunai hit her in the back, determined to escape as quickly as possible. __You can heal yourself later.__

Casting a large genjutsu on the area, she managed to slip away unnoticed with the scroll in her hand, albeit with a large gash on her stomach and a kunai wound in her back and barely any chakra left.

The mission was a success.

* * *

 **Ok, let me just say that this chapter has mainly just been filler apart from the fact that someone else dies and Naoko learns a new jutsu, and this is mainly because I've just been trying to get back on track. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!**

 _If you have any ideas please send them via PM!_

 **Thanks to everyone who has supported and if you haven't, please follow or favourite or post a review! Thanks!**


	7. Life and Death

****Chapter 6****

"Hiroshi Sensei," she says softly.

They were never that close in the first place. Aside from training, they rarely spoke, aside from the times that they spoke the odd word, exchanged greetings and occasionally helping each other out with errands.

He was only four or five years older than her, and he had made a name for himself as a fighter who was to be feared. To her, he had seemed invincible, because she had experienced the results of being his personal punching bag and she had never beaten him, not once, despite being a supposed prodigy.

Perhaps it was the fact that he was the first person that really cared about Naoko Shimura, instead of the Clan Head's daughter or their little sister. Having him beat her up and joke about it afterwards made her feel like he was… a friend.

She remembers what having friends felt like. They make you happy and sad and laugh and cry and storm out of the room in anger, and, most of all, they support you, and care for you.

 _"_ _ _Alice! Stop moaning! You still got a merit!"__

To die at thirteen years old. She smiles grimly at the irony.

She places the small bouquet of pink flowers on the rock with his name roughly carved into it. They are wild flowers, but he always used to point them out to her when they went on missions together.

"I hope you have a better life next time. Hell, maybe we'll even see each other again! And we can be friends again, see, and you can pummel me into the ground again, like we always do, and then we'll… we'll…"

Her voice trails off again as she leans against the slab of stone, surrounded by countless, identical others. There are no tears, but she chokes on her words and suddenly she slumps on the floor.

It is strange. She does not feel sad, or even angry like she was before. She feels… normal. She does not really feel anything at his death, contrary to what she thought she would.

"I'm going to go run my ten laps now, okay?" she asks quietly, smiling, before picking herself up and jogging away. "I won't disappoint you, I promise."

* * *

After another hour of sparring and skipping stones with Hashirama - Madara is still away - she basks in the warm sun like a lizard. She plaits and unplaits her hair, weaving the ribbons around her dark locks like she has done it all her life, which she has.

Her skin aches, as does her jaw, but she knows that she has improved from before. Her taijutsu is better than ever, and her chakra levels have started to increase to the point that she can keep a Shadow Clone up for four minutes before tiring.

Her stamina is better now, after running all those lengths and laps with weights, and the strength in her legs has increased a lot.

She hums quietly in the background, a song that nobody in this world recognises, a song from Before. She doesn't remember the words or its name, but she remembers the tune, and she remembers the time that this song was played at her aunt's wedding.

She remembers only a little about Before. She remembers getting a distinction in her Grade 7 piano exam and preparing for but never managing to take Grade 8, and she remembers her brother's twentieth birthday, and maybe the occasional song or face. She remembers all the things that she wants to forget.

"Are you afraid of death?" she asks.

"Isn't everyone?" he replies, looking more than a little startled at the sombre question. She shrugs, undoing her hair and removing the colourful ribbons, only to start plaiting again.

"But you will be able to see your little brother again, won't you?" she asks, sounding a little too innocent for Hashirama to feel comfortable. "To be able to not have to fight or kill anymore, to be able to finally see the end of the suffering and hatred in the world… is that not what most people want?"

She sighs, taking the plaits out once more, only to leave her long hair loose. She ties one of the ribbons around her wrist and fashions a bow from the other. She ties it into Hashirama's hair, smiling at his appalled expression, but he does not take it out.

"And yet people all try to fight for survival, no matter what. They do terrible things in order to keep themselves alive in his hellish world. They do not want to see the end of the suffering. Even I cannot bring myself to slit my own throat or stab my own heart, even though I want to escape this world the most."

He does not answer her. She did not expect him to. She gets up to leave. "You look pretty in that. Keep it. I'll be going on a mission soon, so do not expect to see me again for another few months at least," she says, smiling dryly. "Goodbye."

* * *

She packs her things for her next mission.

She is to go to the Senju Clan again. Her mission will be to feed them rumours and give (false) idle speculation with subtle genjutsu and slips of the mouth that never happened. She does not expect to return in less than four months, but she does not pack much because it might seem suspicious.

By the time she gets to neutral land, she changes her chakra signature and suppresses it, then uses a small genjutsu over her appearance. It requires less chakra than the Hiding With Camouflage Technique, but requires more concentration.

She arrives in a few days, but much faster than the first time she came here, because she knows what to look out for now.

She changes into the appearance of Hashirama (she knows that he will be at the Serpent River. He always is, even when they are not.), who should be arriving soon afterwards, unless she has underestimated how long it would take for him to arrive, which she most likely has not.

The guards allow her to enter without a second glance. She enters through the back, as she knows that Hashirama does, because she remembers him telling her once that he could not stay with them for that long.

 _ _("Seriously! My father is getting suspicious. I even have to go through the back exit and I had to bribe the guards to help me keep this secret…")__

As soon as she enters, she turns left in the direction that Hashirama's house is in. She idly speculates that she seems like a stalker, what with how much she knows about his private life. She carefully does not snort in the middle of the road.

She goes into the alley near the back, triple checks that nobody is there, and then removes the jutsu. She creates a Shadow Clone, who runs all the way back towards the gate in case Hashirama returns early.

She crouches down for a while, exhausted from the chakra that has been sucked out of her. She keeps her breathing quiet and stands up to transform into one of the mothers that she saw somewhere or other, and searches for a target.

Unluckily, she does not find anyone like that apart from a little boy that she recognises as the child of one of the more well-known Senju. She follows him home, and of course she is __not__ a stalker when she hides inside his closet after disabling all the traps and setting them back up again.

He has white, spiky hair in tufts and dark brown eyes. He is about her age, probably a year or two younger, but a lot shorter. He is naive, compared to the children in her compound. He does not have to go to war until he is ten, because he is training to be a medic, so he is cocky and insensitive.

She spends the first two weeks observing his behavioural patterns, his daily schedule, and everything from how he walks to how he greets other people.

She cannot help but look away when he changes in the morning though, because that is an indecency from Before that she simply cannot get rid of, even though she is supposed to look out for every detail.

She especially hates it when he sings, and when he goes to shower. __That__ is scary. He takes twelve minutes on average, and his singing sounds worse than when Alice first started playing the violin.

His closet is surprisingly comfortable, though it is a little bit dark and she feels a bit stiff after being in there for ages, and she has to look through the cracks. Whenever he opens the closet she uses a genjutsu to hide her presence, though one can only hope he doesn't notice how his clothes are all wrinkly the next day.

She sleeps at various times in the day to hide from others, and even then she sleeps with one eye open. She steals his leftover food and watches him sleep. Yes, it may seem creepy, but it's part of her job description.

At night she sends him off to sleep with genjutsu, subtly messing with his mind and telling him things that he probably shouldn't know. She repeats it all with with random people, most of whom hold importance, until they can't ignore the messages that they're getting anymore.

Sleeping in closets has really become __her thing__ now. Sometimes she gets bored and whispers to Hashirama in the night and cackles silently as she watches him hide under the covers.

 _ _("Your brother has really nice toenails…")__

She knows that she really shouldn't do this, but her moral guide is also telling her that she really shouldn't mess with people's dreams, and shouldn't mess with people in general, and you __really__ shouldn't watch people sleep, especially if they are of the opposite gender. Ninjas don't have morals though.

But sometimes, especially when you're supposed to function everyday for months with only four hours of sleep and you need to conceal your presence 24/7, sometimes you might just want to troll someone, because you are literally hiding in a closet for days on end, and sometimes you just want a little bit of entertainment.

 _ _("Don't tell me about how I smell better when I'm sleeping! Stop it!"__

 _"_ _ _Hashirama, who are you talking to?"__

 _"_ _ _Uh, no-one. Go back to sleep, Tobirama.")__

It took six months for the rumours to really develop into something bigger. She missed her tenth birthday in that time, watching a bratty girl complain about how sitting in a seiza is uncomfortable __(sitting in a seiza has nothing on living in a closet)__.

By the seventh month, the Clan Head, Butsuma, had decided to bring it up. Naoko was sitting in the closet, waiting for her next meal, while he yelled to his family about what was happening.

You know, the usual. How could they trust the rumours that were tearing the clan apart? How could Butsuma command his people when someone had falsely accused him of killing his own people in cold blood? How would they cope?

The Senju clan started to tear apart. Father against son, brother and brother, best friends split apart. On one side, they tried to overrule the Clan Head and his family. The other side was trying to wrestle back control over the clan.

Even though the latter group had the stronger people, the fighters and the ones with power and brute strength, it was in the minority. The first group had the people, as well as commanding officers that wanted power for themselves, the people that Butsuma had trusted and loved. They wouldn't listen.

The Senju clan's former glory had been tarnished, and it was eating away at everyone. She should have been glad. This was what her father had commanded her to do - this is what people had expected of her.

It was for the clan, and for everyone she loved.

But if this continued, she knew, then what happens in the Future-Past would be completely changed. Madara and Hashirama and Naruto and Sasuke and Konoha will be gone. She was torn just as much as the Senju were, especially when another of their smaller compounds had been completely demolished.

She couldn't watch anymore as Hashirama broke down before her, as one of her best - only - friends cried himself to sleep because of something that she had done.

She couldn't watch when his little brother wiped away his tears in the morning and continued with his tough act, or pretend that nothing the people said hurt him __("Bastards! Arrogant, selfish bastards!")__ because he was only a child.

Before the Beginning, seven-year-old children like him were supposed to be… playing and laughing and innocent and they weren't supposed to be so… sad.

The next morning she quickly got up and brushed through her hair with her fingers and tried to make sure that she looked presentable. She tied the ribbons in her hair and hoped that her clothes were not too wrinkly (even though she had not changed them for three days) and she left the compound.

She sped through the clearings and trees. It took her over an hour to arrive at the Serpent River with chakra-enhanced limbs, though she was much slower than Hashirama, who would probably have arrived in half an hour easily. She suppressed her chakra and finally let go of the invisibility genjutsu.

When she arrived, she was the only one there. Her chakra level was dangerously low, and she swallowed two soldier pills without thinking.

She looked into the small stream and looked at her reflection. Under her eyes were dark, heavy bags that practically screamed 'no sleep,' and her hair, even though she had brushed it and plaited it like always, was haywire.

Her skin was ghastly pale, and she looked more like Ichiro at the moment that she did herself, with her gaunt and hollow appearance. Her eyes were tired and weary.

She smelled pretty bad too. She would have to take a shower sometime, though she certainly couldn't take a shower right now.

"Hey," she heard. She turned around and tried to smile - though it made the boy behind her grimace. "Long time no see. You look terrible."

She rolled her eyes, even though she knew he was only telling the truth. "I smell even worse. Trust me, four hours of sleeping with your eyes open every day for seven months straight is not good. Neither is having to steal food from the bins."

Madara looked taken aback for a moment before nodding. "It was my birthday half a year ago," he said. "I got a sword for my birthday. You wanna see?"

She nodded, smiling as he brought it out from the sheath that he wore. She never used swords, so she didn't know much about them. They were too large and bulky for her line of work.

"It was my birthday five months ago," she says. "I'm sorry. I didn't get a gift for you." She eyed the sword with jealousy. She hadn't gotten a birthday gift in years. He shrugged, smirking as he slid the sword back into the sheath. She smiled at the pride he had towards his sword, even though it was only a metal stabby thing that would kill.

She waited until Hashirama arrived. He smiled, though she could see that he looked just as tired as she did, now that she wasn't looking through a crack in the closet doors.

"What are you -?"

She barely managed to conceal her surprise when he wrapped his arms around her. "You were gone for seven months! __Seven!__ " he cried. "I was worried! You're never gone for that long, even if Madara and I are, and I'm so glad that you returned in one piece, because… because…"

She slowly let her shock turn into a smirk, trying to release herself from his vice grip. Madara raised a brow and picked up a pebble, bringing his arm back before releasing it.

"O-Ow!" the Senju cried, cradling his head with his hands, where a bumped had started to form. "W-What was that for?"

Madara rolled his eyes. "You're both idiots."

They sparred against each other, with Naoko almost fainting in the second round against Madara due to chakra exhaustion and exhaustion in general, and then raced up and down the rocks and cliffs, though she was too tired to move.

Her muscles were much weaker than they had been before. She blamed that on the seven months that she had spent sitting in closets and wasting chakra, whereas Madara and Hashirama had spent that time getting stronger.

It had made the difference in strength between them that much greater, even though there wasn't much competition between Naoko and the other two in the beginning anyway.

"I'm leaving. I have to go," Madara announced at the end of a chakra control race, and he waved at them before leaving.

Naoko made sure that he was long gone before she finally mustered up the courage to speak. "Hashirama, I know what's happening to the Senju." It was a risky move, but she had to do this. Hashirama tensed immediately and all humour left his face immediately.

"The clan is turning against you and your family. Make them like you, give them an affable persona to look up to and love. You have charisma, Hashirama. Use it." She put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a stiff nod, before turning around to leave.

Hashirama was left speechless.

* * *

Hashirama wonders if talking with her was ever this depressing.

He wanted to escape the death and horror when he came here to the stream. It was where they could just laugh and play like normal children without having to look over their shoulders constantly, without the prospect of war looming over them like a dark cloud.

When she spoke, it wasn't how other girls or civilians in his clan spoke. She spoke as if she __knew__ things, knew much, much more than she was willing to show, and he knew that she wasn't what she tried to convince them she was - innocent, friendly, __normal__.

Hashirama wasn't stupid. He knew that she had as much red in her ledger as anyone else, and he knew that she was far from easy-going or anything less than awkward, and he knew, most of all, that she was the strangest, weirdest person that he had ever met, and he had met a lot of people.

 _"_ _ _To be able to not have to fight or kill anymore, to be able to finally see the end of the suffering and hatred in the world… is that not what most people want?"__

She put up a good show, but it wasn't quite enough. It might have been the way she talked so sadly, so __knowingly__ , maybe how she always seemed to catch herself before she let slip something important, or perhaps he just had a killer instinct.

He remembers the first time that he met her. He doesn't know how she knew their names, and it was suspicious, really. Civilians weren't supposed to be this far out, so close to the war.

He remembers waiting with Madara when Naoko was knocked unconscious by the pebble - __a pebble though?__ \- and he remembers how he knew that she couldn't be a civilian, but she also couldn't be a shinobi, but what was she then?

 _"_ _ _My name is Naoko. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."__

He remembers the way she bowed - perfectly. It was a perfect right angle, her arms perfectly pinned to her sides with her feet perfectly positioned. It was just a bit… __too__ perfect.

He remembers how she smiled - a fake and easy smile. It made him cringe, because nobody should have to smile like that, and nobody should be able to smile so easily when there is nothing to smile about.

It was simply as if she had gone into autopilot, and when she was in autopilot her face would mold itself into that eerie, perfect smile.

He remembers seeing her __that day__. She looked, quite frankly, awful. Her hair was unruly and there were heavy bags under her eyes, and she looked more like a ghost than anything. She __never__ looked like this. The Naoko he knew would never stand unruly hair or wrinkled clothes.

Her eyes were keen, however, and she was alive. She was alive, and he was truly glad for that, because she would never know how worried he had been about her.

 _"_ _ _Trust me, four hours of sleeping with your eyes open every day for seven months straight is not good. Neither is having to steal food from the bins."__

He couldn't imagine what she had been through. Sleeping for four hours a day, every day for seven months, was less than what he got when he was fighting in the war, where they slept in shifts. He couldn't even imagine how she managed to sleep with her eyes open if she was talking literally, though he certainly wouldn't put it past her.

Her tone was light, although they all knew it carried more than that.

He hadn't seen her for seven months, and just when she returned, she disappeared for another five months again. She had warned him, but he had never expected her to be gone for over half a year at a time.

Those incredibly long-term missions were left to the spies and the like, not people like her, not people like her who -!

 _"_ _ _Hashirama, I know what's happening to the Senju."__

His mouth flew open. "What are you doing now?" Tobirama asked in exasperation. He chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head, stuttering back a reply. He remembers the ribbon that she had given him, had put in his hair, the one that he kept tied around his wrist, because that was how she sometimes wore it.

It was no coincidence that in the seven months that the clan had started to split apart, Naoko had disappeared.

* * *

 **Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! And even if you don't celebrate either of them, here's my little gift to you all. I'm so exhausted right now and I'm working on Chapter 12 of this fic at the moment but can't properly put my thoughts into words or stick to this writing style, but I'll try my best, and** _if you have any ideas for this fic please send them_ **as it would be a huge help.**

 **Thanks to everyone who has supported and if you haven't, please follow or favourite or post a review! Thanks!**


	8. The Calm Before the Storm

****Chapter 7****

She comes back home after seven months sleeping in closets and eating from bins, and she relishes the feel of the soft blankets around her. She can still hear her brothers sleeping, Isamu snoring softly and Ichiro's rhythmic breathing, in the room next to hers. She sighs contentedly. She slept for eleven hours that night, nearly triple the amount she got before.

She quickly gets up, and she loves the fact that she is able to finally get a hot shower, to spend twenty minutes sitting around doing nothing, and that there is no rush. She has the day to do whatever she wants to.

She gets up and quietly heads out of the house, not bothering to leave a note. Her father is awake and besides, it isn't like they're unused to the fact that she is gone a lot.

Instead of the usual braid that she wears, she ties it back in a ponytail, and she has the silver brooch pinned on the inside of her shirt.

She walks around the mostly empty compound, seeing Jirou's mother with four small children waddling beside her, though Jirou himself is not there. She passes by with a small wave and a smile, but the children clamour for their mother's attention and they are soon off on their way.

"There you are."

She turns around sharply, instinctively falling into the Hiding with Camouflage Technique, a hand on her senbon pouch already. She lets her hand drop as she sees who it is - her older brother, the one that managed to sneak up on her with a prosthetic arm, a wooden leg and an eyepatch.

"W-What are you doing here? Weren't you asleep?" she asks.

He grins and rolls his eyes, and she scowls. "Yes, I was asleep when you left the house, __an hour ago.__ I haven't spoken to you since you got back, so I went out looking for you, right?"

"There was no need. I was just about to go home anyway," she replies shortly, disguising the fact that she had forgotten what time it was already. Her stomach growled quietly, and she carefully did not react to it. "Let's go home for breakfast," she says.

They talk as they walk on their way home.

"I can perform seals and mold my chakra pretty much normally now, right? Oh yeah, and I can run kinda fast too, even with this thing here. And I just sneaked up on you, a supposed infiltration specialist, so I'm doing pretty well, I think. Outo-sama says that I'll be allowed to take missions soon," he said, grinning to himself.

She smiles, carefully filtering away the worry that is seeping into her. She doesn't want him to go fight in the war. It is dangerous, and the brooch can only protect one person at a time.

"Maybe," she says quietly.

* * *

"You're… Kaya-san," she said, her eyes widening just a fraction. The girl-woman before her nodded, and Naoko immediately felt a twinge of suspicion, her pulse quickening slightly. She instinctively leaned back into a defensive pose, hand over her kunai holster.

This couldn't be true. It couldn't. Her eldest brother, the one who had once sang her a lullaby, the nerdy, awkward boy that she loved more than anyone else in the world… She shook her head. Of course not. Naoko would wake up soon and this would all be over, because it could not be happening. No. The very idea was ridiculous.

Ichiro was… Ichiro was… __on a date?!__

"Please call me Kaya, Naoko-hime," the older girl said, slipping into a low bow. Naoko attempted to calm herself down, taking deep, even breaths, and yet failing for the first time in years. She couldn't - she __wouldn't__ calm down.

"Right. Kaya. The girl that Ichiro's going to have children with and marry. Yes - you're __that__ Kaya. You're the Kaya that Ichiro never mentions and yet mentions all the time. That's you, right?" she asked, slightly hysterical.

"Nao-chan! I wouldn't say -!"

"Nonsense! You'll have great kids. Beautiful kids. Oh, but Kaya-san, he's - he's really innocent. Don't try the sex talk until he's eighteen, okay? No, wait! What am I saying? Of course he knows about the sex talk! He's the one that tells people to have more children!"

"Hime!"

"And don't make me babysit for you. Isamu's great with children. He'll help. And you know me, I'll probably drop them on their heads. Right, right, but you'll have to move in first, but won't that be awkward for me because -?!"

 _"_ _ _N-No! Please stop!"__

Naoko whipped her head around. "Right," she said, composing herself as she realised that people in the nearby stalls were watching them with mortified expressions.

"Excuse me," she said, leaving the flustered girl and her blushing brother frozen, walking towards their home as if she hadn't completely embarrassed herself. What was she thinking? As the Clan Head's sister and someone in a higher social position, she had completely ruined the people's image of her.

"Aww, shucks," she mumbled to herself with a small grin as she watched Ichiro apologising desperately to Kaya and the people around them, his face completely red.

"I never knew you were __that__ kind of guy, Ichiro-sama, eh?" one of the stall owners, a large man with a booming voice, cackled, and the people around them all started laughing at Ichiro's expense. "I never knew you created the 'one child a year' policy just for something like this! At fifteen as well!"

Naoko cracked a grin. She was supposedly only ten in terms of physical age, but she was now… twenty-three mentally.

Undoubtedly Ichiro and Isamu would feel pressured to… __talk__ to her about the things she had implied and talked about (things that no ten year old should ever know) as overprotective brothers, but it would be awkward talking about __it__ to… well, their sister. Their ten year old sister.

She was sure that she was grinning like the Cheshire Cat for days.

* * *

She remembers one face in particular. There are a few that she remembers, and a few more that she can faintly recall, but this one strikes her in particular.

He was an American with ginger hair and brown eyes, and had pale skin that sunburned whenever he spent more than twenty minutes in the sun. She knows that he was, like her, an avid Naruto lover. His name? She long forgot that.

"Wouldn't the world be so much better if Sasuke didn't exist?" he asked.

"Maybe," she replied.

"Wouldn't the world be so much better if Uchihas didn't exist?"

"Dunno."

She didn't want to interrupt his rantings and tell him that __no__ , not all Uchihas were evil and that the world was a better place without them, because once you interrupted his rantings, you would never survive.

She remembers him holding her hand right before she died, him along with six others all crowding around her as she coughed and choked and wheezed. She vaguely remembers him running to get someone nearby to notice, running around the streets, onto the road…

She remembers watching him in the ambulance with her. Two children died that day. One of them ended up in a fictional world. God knows where the other one went.

 _…_ _ _Beep… Beep… Beep...__

* * *

"Ahem, N-Nao-chan," Isamu said, his face set so seriously and yet coloured beet red from embarrassment that she couldn't help but smile as he stared determinedly at the ceiling, then at her, then at the floor. "W-We should… talk."

"About what?" she asked innocently, though they both knew she was anything but. It __had__ to have been about whatever she had pulled the other day, seeing Ichiro and Kaya. She was surprised that Ichiro had managed to suppress his pride and tell Isamu though.

She knew that he would be angry - furious, even - but she had always figured that __whatever__ she had said was embarrassing enough that Ichiro wouldn't know how to go about scolding her, and would eventually drop it. It seemed like somehow, he had managed to shove the responsibilities onto Isamu.

"How… How do you know about… babies?" Isamu asked, choking on the last word a little. She grinned. __Since Biology lessons happened.__

"How do you?" she asked, carefully making sure it sounded a little too innocent for it to be convincing, letting smugness drip through. "What happens when babies are born anyway, Isamu-nii? I don't like being the youngest. I want a little brother or sister. Get me one."

"I-I can't just get you a little sibling! You know that, Nao-chan, right?!"

"Well, why not?"

"I-I just can't, okay?"

"B-But…"

"Hey! Don't start the puppy eyes…"

* * *

Isamu's first mission is a failure.

Technically, the ambush of the Hono was successful, and that was the objective of this mission. Their compound is blackened and people are screaming and dying left and right.

Isamu uses his Wind Style jutsu to amplify the Fire Style jutsu that the Hono are spewing out in a desperate attempt to defend themselves, and everything is burning.

There is smoke everywhere. He cannot breathe, and he is trapped inside a wooden, flaming building with ten others - including people on the Shimura side.

"Retreat! Retreat!" someone is yelling. Isamu's ears are ringing and he cannot breathe through the smoke. He coughs and his lungs are burning with the blatant lack of oxygen. He manages to throw off one of the Hono shinobi that flew in his direction, but is cornered by fire all around him. He stops halfway through a step, almost falling into the flames.

He is choking. His eyes are stinging and he cannot see. Everything is black and red and he has burns all over his body. He is running out of air. No, he ran out of air a long time ago. His wooden leg is burning and he is struggling to put it out.

He limps and limps to the blocked exit, and in a final act of desperation he charges with his prosthetic arm into the wall nearby, and he jumps through the hole that he has made and falls limply on his back, on the ground.

He rolls three times before coming to a standstill. He can breathe now, but enemies are on his trail. There is one man coming after him, his sword raised and it is coming down, and Isamu sees the attack coming but cannot dodge.

The boy - a rather skinny thing with orange hair and pale skin - slams it down, and Isamu is frozen as his numb body gets thrown into the air.

" _ _Isamu-sama__!" someone calls, a little boy about the same age as Naoko - dear, dear Naoko, who told him not to do this but he didn't listen - who blocks the sword with his own.

They run for five days without stopping, someone continually having to help Isamu hobble along. There are two medics within the fourteen survivors, and his burns are healed and his wounds are bandaged. He was __this__ close to death.

It that little boy hadn't helped him, he would be dead, at age twelve.

Nobody gets any sleep at all. The Hono do not follow, though. Both sides have suffered losses. The entire compound is blackened and half of the Hono forces have been taken out, but there are only fourteen Shimura survivors out of the forty-eight that were originally sent to ambush them.

 _"_ _ _We will get revenge!"__ one of the Hono shouts. He doesn't doubt it for a second.

* * *

Naoko doesn't manage to meet Hashirama or Madara for another month. She has been preoccupied with getting back to grips with her weapons and skills and after five days of training non-stop, she is finally pretty much on par with her previous self with her accuracy with senbon.

She is rustier with taijutsu and stamina and speed, but her chakra control remains just as good, if not better, as it was before, undoubtedly the seven months spent suppressing chakra and sustaining long-term genjutsu paying off.

She can walk silently without having to try, and her eyes are much keener than before. She is still good at the manipulation and deception arts, although she hasn't had much practice as most of her missions have consisted of intel gathering or assassinations.

Naoko can do many things that her brothers cannot, even though she has much less chakra than them and is physically weaker, and her jutsu are barely decent compared to theirs.

She can be whoever she wants to be, whoever anyone wants her to be, and she can do it all easily. She can do things that they would never dream of.

One month later is when she finally hears the news, though she does not hear it through her father or anyone else in the clan, mainly because they do not bother telling __little girls__ , but she hears through the alarms and shouts and through the heavy smoke that she cannot breathe in, and that is when she realises, before anyone else, that Isamu made a mistake.

There are two men in her house, she knows. She takes her senbon and although it is late at night and she cannot see very well, her aim is true and the two men are dead instantly.

Everyone is panicking and nobody is taking control. There are bodies littered everywhere, and there is smoke and fire and charred ash and she vaguely remembers the attack in which her mother died.

She hesitates to give out orders because she knows that nobody will take a ten year old girl seriously, even if she is the Clan Head's daughter.

She has no idea where the rest of the people in her household are. Ichiro is on the war and her father and Isamu are most likely fighting people outside. Naoko cannot breathe with the smoke in her lungs, and she quickly manages to avoid the flames in her burning house and she enters air again.

There are no enemies within sight, which means that they were probably all taken care of. Fire jutsu as strong as their killer intent, Naoko knew that it had to be the Hono clan that had discovered Isamu and the others during the ambush on their mission.

The situation was so similar that it couldn't be a coincidence. Half of the clan had been wiped clean and the entire compound had been burned to ashes.

" _ _Tch.__ "

Several shinobi in a line started to spew out water onto the houses to set out the fire that licked the sky like tongues of flame. There was a line of injured shinobi and Naoko set off to help heal them with the other medics.

They took care of all of them in about an hour, although there were only about thirty shinobi in one of the compounds.

She had seen her brother in the long line of injured shinobi, though her father had disappeared. She could normally find him immediately, which was worrying, but she had more important things to tend to at the moment.

"We have heard that two of the other compounds have been attacked as well. There are only two hundred and eleven survivors of the original three hundred and eighty," she overhears someone saying. "And now the Clan Head is dead, just to top it all off."

The Clan Head is dead.

 _ _That rhymes__ , she notes idly. Her parents are both dead. She was now an orphan. It was strange. Even though he was her father, they barely even spoke and he barely bothered to acknowledge her presence.

And yet she still remembered him as the man who had smiled when she had completed her first mission and the person that she had inherited her permanent scowl from.

There are no tears, but she does not expect them. This is no different from the first two times. There is nowhere to sleep, but the entire clan is now gathered in one place. There are only two hundred of them left.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that is why Ichiro Shimura, the son of the previous Clan Head, is now their leader at only fifteen years old, with his younger brother Isamu and the Clan Elders as his advisors.

Women are paired with whoever is available and they are farming children like livestock - one child every year with exceptions for age and health reasons. Naoko faintly disapproves, but it is necessary for the survival of the clan.

All of the children must take shinobi classes for two years, though only the male ones must continue with their education, but there are still not enough people fighting in the war, so they call anyone who is available. Ichiro is more than disappointed when his younger sister is one of the only suitable female candidates, and he has no choice but to agree.

Naoko Shimura and Isamu Shimura are sent to the war, along with several other children their age. Ichiro stays behind as the Clan Head, and though she knows that he needs time to grieve, he is doing his best to keep it all in and to lead his clan.

It is all so sudden. They had no time to prepare. It isn't fair.

 _ _Life isn't fair__ , a voice reminds Naoko from the back of her head.

Life isn't fair - not for you, nor the five year old boys sent to fight in the war, nor the innocent people that you will kill, just because they somehow got in your way. It wasn't fair when Hashirama was forced to take matters into his own hands when his clan was torn into two, it wasn't fair when Madara's brothers were killed when they were all only children.

It was never fair and it never will be. Count yourself lucky that you still have two brothers who love you more than anything, and the fact that you are still alive, even though you ended up in this shitty world, but unlike everyone else here, you have - __had__ \- something that nobody else has.

 _ _After all, in your first world you had everything.__

* * *

Her father's funeral was an affair that included the entirety of the clan. They were all gathered up in one place and, looking around, it was a swarm of black.

Her mother hadn't received an individual funeral, being a woman, despite being the wife of the Clan Head, and Naoko hadn't attended Hiroshi Sensei's joint funeral, making this the first funeral that she had ever been to in both lives.

There were two separate ceremonies so that nobody was left out of it, while there was always somebody guarding compound, not that there was much to be guarded anyway. They were trying to start the construction works, but even so, it took a long time.

She remembers Yamato with his Wood Style in the Future-Past and how much easier it would be to rebuild everything if the Senju were here instead.

"No, that's ridiculous," her older brother, the new clan head, says firmly. "An alliance with the Senju clan is bound to fail. They'll stab us in the back first." There, she thinks. He doesn't see it. He doesn't have the vision that she has, but he knows the statistics.

Half of the clan was wiped out in __one__ encounter with them, and who knew what else could happen? How many more people would die?

She and what's left of her family are at the very front. She watches the smoke of the incense as it wafts upwards, watches the picture of the very man, his usual scowl there, who gave her a second chance in life.

What would they say if they knew she wasn't even the Naoko they thought they knew? No, on second thoughts, they probably wouldn't care. She did a good job of helping the clan in the war, and that's all that they really cared about.

That was the purpose for children here, anyway. So they could fight and continue their parents' legacies in a pointless, never-ending war. It was just so… wrong.

She stands idly, bored even, watching the tears flow from her brothers' eyes, watching them shake and sob and watching everyone else watch her. She stands tall, stands strong, ignoring the whispers about her being heartless.

 _ _I'm sorry.__

She says the things that she wishes she had been able to say to her real parents, her first parents, before the beeping stopped.

 _ _I loved you.__

She directs those genuine thoughts - those heartfelt thoughts - to the parents that never knew, the parents that she never truly loved in the way that she loved her real parents. They are fakes, in the way that she is a fake.

 _ _I don't want to die.__

She gives a fleeting smile to her brothers, to the men and women and the crying children standing behind her. She gives a fleeting smile to the picture of the man who led his clan, who loved his clan, who died for his clan, and imagines a picture of his wife next to him.

She can imagine her Outo-sama scowling and complaining quietly about the paperwork, and her Okaa-san cooking quietly in the background, and the way that her Outo-sama gave a rare smile and her Okaa-san roll her eyes fondly.

She can imagine two little boys with their parents, being happy despite everything going on around them. And then she imagines a little girl with her father's permanent scowl, complaining about training or something else.

The little girl that was meant to be here, not her. The real Naoko, her parents and older siblings all together, and truly, she feels something in her heart then.

She imagines the two little boys merging into one, the parents' faces morphing into something else, the little girl becoming Alice, and she sees her friends - something that she never had in her second life - around the table as well.

She sees two sets of family and friends, yet they are both hers. Alice and Naoko are one, and she says genuinely with a smile, "I love you," even though she didn't really, and yet the little girl whose body she had taken up smiled as well, and echoed,

 _ _I love you.__

* * *

 **Yeah, it kinda turned 180 degrees from fluff to angst in this chapter. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Which parts of the story did you like most and what would you like to see in upcoming chapters? I think that the beginning drifted a little (a lot) from what I normally write about, so please tell me how you felt about it.**

 **Thanks to everyone who has followed, favourited or reviewed - just to let you know, getting this support from you all makes my day!**

 **:)**


	9. The Past Before

****Chapter 8****

War is harsh on the fighters. It is non-stop battling and surviving and paranoia and death. Naoko's once skinny ribs are even skinnier, the once prominent bags underneath her eyes even more prominent.

Naoko would be lying if she said that she hadn't gotten stronger. In the war it was do or die, sink or swim, and unless she got stronger she wouldn't survive. Nobody cared, in the end, when you were dead. You were all the same - just another casualty in a never-ending war.

Her combative skills are better, much better, and her instincts are sharper. She has better stamina and speed now from the constant running and fighting. She can notice details that she never would have noticed before - she can pick out one twig from a million and tell you that this is the path that they must have chosen.

Her medical ninjutsu is greatly appreciated on the war. The injured don't have to wait for back-up before they can carry on fighting.

Her chakra control is sharper, better, just like her taijutsu, where she makes every hit count with no wasted movement. She cannot waste a single opportunity. Her strength is greater, even though the extra muscle is hard to hide when you are undercover.

She is grateful that she has not started the less savoury parts of her job, because she would be found out immediately with the scars and muscle that she has gained.

Naoko can spew out ninjutsu faster now. She only knows one attacking move, but she makes it count. She can use the elemental jutsu with only one seal instead of three.

She hasn't had time to practise her torture skills for a while, and her deception skills may have gotten a little rusty, but she makes up for it, even though she cannot use poisons here with her own comrades around her.

Her typical genjutsu and senbon combination is possibly the most useful of them all. With it, she can kill a man without wasting any weapons. She appears to throw a senbon, they dodge it only to get hit by the real one.

A lot can change in four months.

When she was a spy she prided myself on her ability to look good, to apply cosmetics and braid her long hair with colourful ribbons and wear beautiful clothes, to be able to do everything while appearing to do nothing, to be able to understand the mind of the target through only a casual conversation.

Now, as a warrior, there is no time for cosmetics, her hair is the last thing on her mind, and she wears her armour instead of kimonos and she wears it with pride. There is nothing subtle about stabbing and killing, although being smart about the battle does help.

She gets scars and injuries, and she feels conflicted about them. In one way, she is proud of them. They showcase everything that she has been through, shows that she is __not__ just another girl with nonsense in her brain, show that she is __not__ someone to be underestimated, because she wears these injuries like medals.

On the other hand, they are scars. They are reminders of her incompetence, of moments when she nearly died because she was too weak. That's the thing. She isn't strong, no matter how much she wants to be, and these are only reminders. Plus, she's kinda obsessed with her skin.

The routine is repetitive, but somehow they make it out of the battlefield alive. Isamu and Naoko can take care of each other, even if sometimes he overreacts.

When you are fighting nothing matters apart from survival, but she cannot say that she is kind to the clan's enemies - her enemies - when she plunges a kunai into the boy's skull and casts him to one side. She shows no mercy and she feels no remorse.

She does not even feel remotely strange about the routine of them killing others and others killing them. She feels as if this is where she belongs. In the end, the war has only made her smarter and stronger, even if she has done some terrible things. Naoko has no morals. She is a kunoichi, a shinobi. Shinobi have no morals. __(But Alice has morals.)__

The Shimura clan is weak, but it will survive. It has to survive.

* * *

She watches like a hawk from above as the Hono clan's compound is breached. They are weak, though the Shimura are currently weaker, and this is a chance to make the stakes even. A boy gives her the signal, and she nudges Isamu.

She falls into the Hiding With Camouflage technique immediately and Isamu disappears into the dirt. She can sense his chakra directly beneath her, and he can hear her footsteps.

There are shinobi pouring out of the compound. Naoko hits one of them with her senbon before he knows what has happened, and he falls dead on the floor. Isamu's hands appear from the dirt and he grabs two ankles, burying their owners neck-deep into the dirt. With one slice of his sword, they are both dead.

However their element of surprise is gone. People are anticipating them, and Naoko cannot hit a single shinobi with her senbon, even though her aim is truer than ever.

Isamu chased after five of the shinobi. "I'll be back soon!" he yelled, and she nodded. She threw senbon at the remaining shinobi - only four - with only one striking a person, on the arm. The shinobi let out a roar of pain but continued chasing after her.

"Fire Style: Great Flame Technique!" Naoko barely managed to dodge the fire by disappearing into the earth, though she knew that she was cornered above. Unlike Isamu, she didn't know how to move underground yet so she was stuck in a certain position.

She formed the seal for a shadow clone before hearing the familiar poof and drain of chakra that left her head spinning for a second.

She counted to twenty before hearing the four Hono shinobi going after her clone and popped up above the ground to regain her breath.

There were five other Shimura shinobi with her and Isamu right now, but they could retreat and call for back-up. On the contrary, there were over eighty Hono shinobi, but this was their compound and they didn't want to burn it down again.

Her head went spinning again as memories flooded into her mind, and she realised that there was a Hono shinobi behind her - a boy about her age, with freckles dotting his face and ginger hair, and she felt her hand twitch as it attempted to reach out.

The rest of the Hono had caught up. "Earth Style: Tearing Earth Turning Palm!" she cried. The Hono did well to avoid the jutsu, but she started the seals for a genjutsu while they were distracted.

Looking around, two of the other Shimura shinobi were heavily injured. Most of them were in decent condition, like her, but Naoko only had a little bit of chakra left. Ironically, it was the boy who had a prosthetic arm and a wooden leg who was currently doing the best.

She was nearly out of chakra and cornered. She was panting, her mind racing in order to come up with a plan while they were still in the genjutsu and spewing out jutsu in random directions. She was frozen still.

"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!" one of the shinobi yelled, managing to snap out of her genjutsu. She cursed as fireballs lept her way.

One of the fireballs managed to hit her, skimming her arm. It was hot, hotter than she had anticipated, and her skin was blistering and turning red. She waved a hand over it with a dull, flickering green glow. It was still sore and red, but it didn't hurt nearly as much.

"I'll deal with this one," one of the Hono said - the boy with the freckles and the ginger hair that she knew but couldn't quite remember. He waited for the other two to leave before smiling in an almost friendly manner, but only __almost__ because Naoko knew that nobody was ever __really__ friendly in a war. He was her enemy and she couldn't let her guard down.

"It's been a while," he said. His tone was kind, and he had no weapons in his hands and he wasn't molding his chakra. She… She didn't __understand.__

What did he mean? She forced herself to keep calm and retained a condescending glare. "I-I have never even met you before. You're simply embarrassing yourself by spewing out random nonsense, so stop it," she said, hating the stutter at the beginning. "It's embarrassing just looking at you, __boy__."

He smiled and let out a laugh - a guffaw, a jolly, kind thing - and she didn't understand. She didn't get it, and yet she felt like she should. "You were always the sarcastic one, weren't you? It's nice to see you haven't changed, after all this time."

She was stalling, hoping that Isamu or somebody else in her clan would suddenly appear, but now realised that she had only given him more shinobi to deal with when the boy before her had dismissed them. She slowly stepped backwards, racking her brain for something - __anything -__ and still found nothing.

Pip stepped backwards in shock. Pip? __Pip?__ He was... He couldn't be… Then again, it made perfect sense. Of course it would. And of course the universe __had__ to do this to her - to pit her clan against his clan, to set them apart like it had with Hashirama and Madara.

"Wait… You really don't… remember me?" the boy asked, his eyebrows furrowing. His expression looked almost… dejected. She forced herself to not reach out to him and comfort him.

"Not one bit," she lied, and formed a false seal. The boy - __Pip__ \- backed up in order to dodge an attack, but she turned on her heals and __ran.__ "Retreat!" she called. "Retreat! Meet at Point C!" She watched as the other Shimura started running as well, the Hono hot on their tails. She noticed Pip - Philip - wasn't following her.

He was her enemy now. Maybe, once, they were friends, but because of their clans, they sure as hell weren't now.

Only five shinobi made it to Point C - one of the injured people and an ambushed guy. They were most likely dead by now. Naoko healed the injuries of the remaining people, rewrapping Isamu's bandages slightly tighter.

"Right. Let's go home now," Isamu said as the leader of the mission. She nodded, smiling even though she felt like crying. She couldn't concentrate on the way back. She could barely keep from tripping over her own feet.

 _"_ _ _Wait… You really don't… remember me?"__

Of course she remembered him. He was the boy who had gotten hit by the truck, trying to get someone's attention while she was choking to death. He was her Naruto buddy, now in more ways than one.

He was possibly the only one who understood her position right now, and she had lied to him. She had lied, because it was the first thing that had come to her mind, without her even realising the slip of the tongue. There was no doubt about it.

She was a liar, through and through. There was no point denying that.

* * *

After four months in the war, Naoko and Isamu finally return home.

The entire compound is rebuilt in another area, and there are layers of genjutsu around the new compound that even she cannot detect. The information breach was surprising, but Ichiro took care of it. He always did.

"I… I'm so glad that you are both safe," he breathes, not quite knowing if it is a dream, if the people in his arms are really alive and well.

Isamu grinned, as always, and even Naoko cracked a smile. Naoko, who never smiled, who had gone through so much and survived through it all, a medic on the front lines who had survived and even managed to hold her own against others, even though she went unprepared.

Ichiro remembers the first time that he saw the war, and the time that his best friend died. She was only a few months old then, but she was aware. She had left him alone, sensing something was not quite right, even though he had tried to disguise it. Naoko had always been smart.

Suddenly he bursts into tears. He cannot help the sobs or the tears that flow freely down his face, because he had finally burst. He had kept the clan together successfully and was looked up to and loved, even after… after __everything.__

He hadn't had to do it by himself, but he still felt alone, and just when his little siblings were home, he'd have to send them away again in a few days. __He__ was supposed to be protecting __them__ , not the other way round!

He looks at them. Isamu looks slightly battered, but otherwise alright. Naoko, apart from two new, long scars etching all the way up to her neck, looked fine, as always. Isamu's eyepatch was slightly ripped, but neither of them were heavily injured.

He didn't know what they had been through and he didn't want to know. There were tell-tale signs of medical ninjutsu practised on would-be fatal wounds and fresh scars that lined what he could see on their bodies, and he frowned.

Naoko was one of the clan's better spies, but with all the wounds that screamed of a life as a shinobi, as well as the callouses on her hands that never used to be there, she would never be able to pass off as a civilian or a little girl, or even woman, again.

It didn't matter too much. She would do equally as well in the Torture and Interrogations, though Ichiro __really__ didn't want her to pursue the life of a shinobi.

To become the clan head at age fifteen after his father's death was like receiving a punch to the gut. He didn't want it but he had to take it. To him it was like an award for living through his father's death, an award for watching the life drain from his eyes as he slowly turned into just another casualty.

It was just another reminder about how helpless he was. He was too slow, he hadn't been able to make it to a medic in time. Becoming the clan head was like life was saying, __here you go, congratulations for your dad's death.__ He didn't __want__ it.

He knew what it was like on the war; one mission after another, life after life coming to an end, and he didn't want his younger siblings to suffer through that, not that he had much of a choice. They had a price to pay for that power; responsibility.

There were about five hundred members of the Shimura clan and around one hundred and thirty of these were shinobi. Two hundred and eighty or ninety of these were aged fifteen or less. It just proved how many people constantly had to die. The average age in the clan was sixteen.

The smaller clans like the Hono and the Aoi had around one hundred people in them after the massacres, while the larger clans like the Uchiha and Sarutobi had around three thousand. Ichiro knew that he couldn't force these numbers up but he had always been taught quantity over quality, though both helped.

Sometimes, as a fifteen year old, it was difficult making these decisions. The Elders helped, of course, but he couldn't help but question their motives and every move. Becoming Clan Head had made him paranoid, just like his father.

"You don't have missions for at least another week, both of you," he said, rubbing his head wearily. "You can finally rest."

He smiled tiredly. When was the last time he had ever had time to rest? He dismissed his siblings. He had a meeting in a few minutes and then had to plan strategy with the Elders, but he grabbed sleep whenever he could get it.

He dropped his head on the desk and was instantly out like a light.

* * *

Naoko had time to herself. It was the first time in a while. It was nice to be able to sleep in and not be afraid of an attack, to be able to know that she wouldn't have to kill someone else and that nobody was going to kill her. When had she ever felt so carefree?

But, somehow, she was bored. It was a feeling she had been well acquainted with Before, but in this world, she barely had any time when she wasn't training or fighting or on a mission. She grabbed the biwa, an instrument that she hadn't played for a while now.

What did she do in her old world anyway?

She vaguely remembers being with friends and going on the internet, not that she could do it here. She frowned. First of all, there was no internet, and secondly, she had no friends. She used to be quite popular Before, she remembers, so it was weird being alone like this. She could visit Hashirama and Madara soon, perhaps.

 _"_ _ _Wait… You really don't… remember me?"__

Somehow it kept coming back to her. She couldn't rest without his betrayed expression haunting her. Lifetime bonds were supposed to last for a lifetime, not for two lifetimes. Surely it didn't matter anymore?

They __couldn't__ be friends, just like Hashirama and Madara couldn't. She was a Shimura and he was a Hono, just like Senju and Uchiha, and nothing could change!

Nothing could change.

She remembers entering this world with all her hope and ideals and morals, only for them to be crushed. She couldn't force the rules of her old world onto this one, no matter how much she wanted it, no matter how much she tried.

But…

 _"_ _ _From what I can tell, the only way we can avoid that is to be upfront and honest with the other side… Perhaps even, I don't know, form an alliance with them!" he exclaimed. "And then there might finally be peace!"__

It was a nice feeling, laying on the floor. She was… content. Yes, that's the word. She hadn't felt like this in a while, ten and a half years ago when she was just a silly little girl after the summer exams, before she had been caught up in all of this… whatever it was.

Sometimes you have to dream big, though, right? Naruto - the dead last - became the Hokage. Hashirama and Madara could create an alliance between the Senju and the Uchiha and eventually create Konoha. She would just speed up the process.

She wouldn't __change__ anything. She was just a catalyst.

She got up. Ichiro was probably finished with whatever he was doing now. He'd listen, even if the idea seemed a little far-fetched and a little crazy. She would make him listen, him everyone else.

 _"_ _ _Maybe… maybe it's not as far-fetched as you think," she said softly. "Yeah… One day, I'd like to go somewhere like that, with you guys, and we can all live like that. In peace…"__

* * *

"An alliance?" he whispered, because no, of course not! Of course this wouldn't work, of course it couldn't! What was she thinking? The Hono would only stab the Shimura in the back after the several attacks on their compound and - and, well of course he couldn't agree!

"An alliance." She looked so determined, so confident in this silly plan of hers that he couldn't help but see it from her point of view.

"Nii-sama," she said, her eyes gleaming with a fierce determination. "Think. It benefits them more than us. They have no choice but to agree, and we are stronger. We can wipe them out if need be, but with an alliance, there could - there could be peace!

"Think about it. We could go with one of those alliances where two people are exchanged from each clan, and then we'd be able to rival the Uchiha and Senju with our power! You know I'd never ask something from you unless I was sure of it… You know that…"

And it was true - she had never asked him for anything before apart from help in training. She was smart too, and she knew the consequences, but she was confident. She was confident in her decision, and he was going to trust her.

"Go… Go gather a team. I'll write a letter. Make sure they receive it." He got a scroll and started writing, his hands shaking. Naoko stood still for a second, her lips parted in shock, before she nodded and left the room, grinning for the first time he had ever seen.

He nodded to himself and handed the scroll to the shinobi next to him, even though the scribbled message had been written quickly and was barely legible. He slowly turned to the Elders in the room, who quickly recovered from the momentary shock.

"This is preposterous -!"

"You cannot surely be -!"

"I can, and I will," he said firmly. "I have made my decision, and it's something I should have done a long time ago. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm just being foolish - but I won't change my mind, so don't even try." He smiled to himself. The fighting was going to stop soon. He knew it would. He could feel it. He could finally understand why Naoko wanted this so much.

He knew that they would understand - Father, Mother, Kaya, and maybe… maybe he likes Kaya, just a little bit. A lot. She's pretty and cute and kind. Maybe he wouldn't mind so much if they spend the rest of their lives together without the dangers of a war.

 _ _(He__ _'_ _ _s blushing.)__

* * *

 **And here you meet Pip/Kenta.** **Do you love/like/not like/absolutely detest him and the Hono clan?**

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thanks for everyone who has supported by favouriting/following/reviewing/lurking/read this far and given this story a chance. As always, feel free to leave a review/PM me and talk to me about the story or even just talk**

 **School starts in a few days so I won't be publishing as often - maybe once a fortnight if I'm lucky.**


	10. A Willing Sacrifice

****Chapter 9****

"I'll do it," she says calmly, as if she was commenting on the weather instead of the outcome of her life. Her hands are perfectly still, a product of years of practise, and a mild smile is on her face instead of the snarl of fury that Ichiro feels would prefer, that he feels is deserved.

 _"_ _ _I volunteer as tribute."__

One week ago, the Elders had agreed to meet with the Hono Elders while they worked out the conditions. The only problem was that Ichiro hadn't been present, but the terms and conditions seemed to be acceptable to the Elders, who had agreed to them without consulting the Clan Head.

Ichiro hadn't been the one to agree to them. He hadn't even known what they were. Perhaps it was his fault, however. He could have delayed the mission but he didn't. He could have attended but he hadn't. He had thought the Elders were capable, but he thought wrong.

The Elders didn't understand what was right and wrong for Ichiro, what was acceptable and not. All they knew was power and gaining power, how to ensure their enemies were trapped in a corner, because they didn't understand what they were agreeing to, what they were going to sacrifice or what it meant to Ichiro.

The only problem was that __Naoko would have to leave__ with the conditions that had been agreed to, because being the Clan Head's sister and a girl, it was realised that she would be the most beneficial to the Hono clan.

While she was important to the Clan Head, ensuring the pact, she was a girl, and in a few years she would be able to bear children. Her genetics were strong, giving way to strong children in the future.

The Hono had realised that and exploited it, on the terms that two clan members would be exchanged to the other clan. While each of the clans chose one of the two that would be exchanged, while the other one would be decided by the other clan.

The Shimura had decided that the Hono Clan Head's middle son, a boy about thirteen years of age, would be best for his combat power and his blind obedience.

The Clan Elders had decided that sending Keisuke, a strong shinobi among the Shimura, would be enough to keep Ichiro happy. Keisuke would keep Ichiro's sister safe and so it was a win-win situation, or so they thought.

After all, Naoko was… unimportant in the scheme of things, a mere pawn. She wasn't particularly strong, nor particularly good at anything compared to her brothers, so it was okay in their eyes. It was a fair trade.

"What? No, don't do it, Nao-chan!" Isamu cries. "I'm your big brother! I should be the one protecting you, not the other way around!"

It was either him or her, and she knew that the clan needed Isamu much more than they needed her. They all knew it. They just didn't want to accept it.

"It's okay," she says. "I'll do it."

Ichiro knows that Isamu would be the only other option that the Hono would accept, apart from Naoko, but he also knows that even if Isamu is perfectly willing, nobody else is. Isamu is precious, he is the one with charisma that keeps things going in the clan, the one that knows everybody on a personal level and… well, Naoko isn't.

"...If you're sure," Ichiro says, ignoring the betrayed look that Isamu is sending in his direction. He knows that, as the Clan Head, this is a choice that he must make.

"I'm sure," she replies.

* * *

"Madara," she greets politely, slightly nervous that Hashirama isn't there. The relationship between them isn't like the relationship between Hashirama and her, and not nearly as close as the relationship between Hashirama and Madara. "It's been a while, again." She chuckles and he rolls his eyes and sits down next to her.

It had been nearly three weeks after Ichiro had agreed to her plan. Most of the details were sorted out, and the Hono had surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) agreed. The only problems were… well… Madara and Hashirama.

"You disappear for seven months, and then you disappear for five months at a time, and both times you appear looking like you haven't slept in days," he states. "What's wrong with you this time?"

She looks surprised. She can read between the lines. __Are you okay?__ he is trying to ask. Her lips twist into one of her usual fake smiles, though he doesn't buy it, and she wonders if he has ever bought it. She knows what he is trying to ask.

"I'm fine," she replies. "Why wouldn't I -"

"Why wouldn't you be?" She blinks, surprised at the outburst. He is angry. It is clearly displayed on his face, but it is a calm anger, an anger that terrifies her. "You're a __girl.__ Why are you… Why are you like this? You're not supposed to fight or go through this, and you're not supposed to hide it when we ask you what's wrong. Stop it."

He slowly composes himself and sits back down. "You've been on the war. You've killed. You have suffered through attacks that should have you dead. __Why wouldn't you tell us?__ "

He was worried. She got that. She just didn't get why he was suddenly bringing it up now, and why now of all days. Besides, he wasn't the mother hen of the three - that was Hashirama.

How did he even notice? She stares back at his coal, black eyes and smirks. Of course. He awakened his Sharingan. But how did he awaken his Sharingan? She freezes for a second. It is barely noticeable as her hands slightly stiffen up and her breath slightly hitches, but both of them notice, and Naoko curses herself for it.

There's a reason that she was never sent to spy on the Uchiha, and that was, firstly, because she wasn't quite at that skill level yet, and secondly, that the Uchiha noticed everything.

She looks at the back of her hand and there are faint scars lining the once soft and untarnished skin. The newest addition was a spiderweb of lines that she got when she was electrocuted by a weaker lightning style jutsu. Perhaps she should get gloves or wrap bandages around her hands and arms, like her brothers, to cover them up.

She pulls up the collar of her shirt to try and cover the larger scars, something that she was slightly sensitive about. Girls didn't get scars. Girls weren't supposed to fight. Girls shouldn't be trained to kill and not bat an eyelash as they drained the life of an opponent.

In her old world she had cared about looking pretty, which was why she used to obsess about her hair and clothes and didn't mind learning to be a housewife, because she enjoyed dressing up like that.

She didn't care that much now as a shinobi. There was simply no time for such trivial matters anymore. She wasn't exactly __vain__ , but she didn't like looking bad, and having so many injuries like that only reminded her of the unblemished skin that she used to have.

"I didn't think you'd notice. I didn't think it'd matter," she says softly. "After all, you and Hashirama have worse injuries compared to mine and neither of you bring it up. I didn't think it mattered because I was a girl."

Madara looked surprised and slightly guilty at her words. She smiled again, attempting to make it look as genuine as possible.

She sighed. She had wanted today to start off better. She had wanted the day to be perfect, with the beautiful weather and the flowers blooming, even though she had to wake up extra early so that she wouldn't be late for her mission with the Hono, because today was… special. She smiled.

There wasn't going to be another day like today for a while.

* * *

"Hey!" She turned around and smiled, seeing Hashirama running up to them. Her eyes widened slightly, seeing him, and she could see him faltering in his step. He gritted his teeth slightly, and in his eyes there was the unmistakable burning of anger and hatred.

She wanted to make things quick. Today, she was going to confess everything, and despite whatever Hashirama might currently think about her, she wasn't going to let that stop her. "Today is a good day, right?" she asked in an attempt to act casually, grimacing at the verbal tick that she recognised as Isamu's.

"I suppose, yeah. Why?" Madara asked with a raised eyebrow.

She sighed slightly and lay her pouch in front of her and the other two. It had been a huge inconvenience to come up with what to give them, but she had managed to do so.

"I'm just going to say this quickly," she said, clearing her throat. She was nervous, the slightest tremor in her hands, and she couldn't get rid of the thickness in her voice or the slight fluttering in her stomach.

"I know that I've literally been gone for seven months, and then five months, and this is the first time in ages that you've managed to see me and I haven't looked like the walking dead. But I might be gone for a long time afterwards. A __long__ time."

The pact was almost confirmed. It was in both clans' best interests and the Hono were not stupid, although they sometimes allowed their emotions to get in their way. All they needed to do was the actual exchange before the deal was done.

And being the idiot that she was, Naoko had volunteered as a spur of the moment sort of decision __("I volunteer as tribute!")__. It would be either her or Isamu, and her older brother didn't deserve this. She could still handle her own if necessary, and he was the one that the clan needed, that Ichiro needed, not her.

"I'm not going to be seeing you, unless you somehow also go… where I'll be going." The pact never ended. She would be stuck there forever. She would never see them again.

"What… What do you mean?" Hashirama asked grimly. "You're not going to die, are you?" She looked up, surprised. Then again, with the way that she had phrased it, it was probably the most logical conclusion. Not the right one though.

"No, no. I'll be alive. I just won't see you again," she said, "Ever. And even if we do," she told them, her tone suddenly dropping, "I'll likely be killed as your opponent." She couldn't keep the disappointed tone out of her voice, even with the false cheer. Hashirama blinked in surprise, gritting his teeth.

"I got you gifts!" she cheered, trailing off slightly at the end. "I… It was unplanned. I had no time to get anything special, but…" She handed two jars to them both - one with paralysis powder and the other containing poison powder. They were in little glass jars that she had made herself, just like the ones they used in Chemistry a long, long time ago.

"Naoko…" Madara said, examining the dark indigo powder carefully. She had chosen these gifts painstakingly carefully. She had made them herself, and had created four batches trying to make it perfect. It was a gift that nobody else could give.

She smiled sadly and cleared her throat again. "Use only a small sprinkle - four milliliters - of it for typical usage and eight for a lethal dosage. It doesn't affect clothing, but it does affect skin and will stain. It's the same with the paralysis. It will wear off in two hours if you inject a mixture of four milliliters of the powder with double the amount of water."

"...Thanks, Nao-chan," she heard Hashirama say quietly, gripping the delicate, glass jars in his hand tightly.

She was unsure of what else to say and she wanted to stall for time. She knew that she had no time left, but she wanted to spend every last moment she could with them. They were her friends - her only friends.

"I like your necklace, Hashirama. I think your eyes are pretty, Madara," she said slowly. Realistically, there was no way to say them out loud, but she hoped they would get the message. "Goodbye."

Half an hour by the river had come and gone, and it was now time to leave. She was going to live with the Hono now. She would never see Hashirama or Madara again. She could only imagine the loneliness she would feel without any friends, because she had betrayed Pip and had left everyone else.

She smiled, though it was still fake, because she really wanted to cry, even if she hadn't cried in God knows how long. She stood up and without a second glance, left.

There was nothing more to say.

* * *

Kenta was the third son and the fifth and last child of Miho and Ryouta Hono, the Clan Head, a (terrifying) short, stocky man with dark brown hair and amber eyes, with three scars on his face. His two brothers took after him, while Kenta and his sisters took after his mother, a ginger-haired, brown eyed, delicate woman.

The Hono clan was relatively small but strong. They could rival clans such as the Sarutobi in terms of their strength and there had been a recent population boom, which would have made just less than four hundred members altogether, before the… __incident.__

It was well known that Hono meant 'flame' or 'blaze,' and the clan was known for their powerful flames and adaptability with fire, even though Kenta was terrified of it.

It was something from his old world - when he had been burnt by a lit match as a child in school. He wanted to laugh at it, really. It was ridiculous - a boy with a phobia of fire was born into a clan most well-known for its fire style jutsu.

Most of the people in his clan had an affinity for fire, and though it was not unusual for people to have lightning or earth, Kenta, who should have had the purest Hono blood being the son of the Clan Head, had an affinity towards water, both a blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing when he sees the flames of the Hono that burn their own compound, because he is one of the few that can help to put out the flames - the cherished and celebrated flames of the Hono which can only be a curse. Their compound - his __home__ \- is blackened and people are screaming and dying left and right.

His elder sister died in the attack, as did his mother and best friend, along with his best friend's brother and cousin and father and little sister.

"Retreat! Retreat!" someone is yelling.

He has burns all over his body, and he is blinded by anger as he stabs a Shimura shinobi with his kunai again and again and __again__ and all he can think is - __this was for Kiyo. This was for Yosuke. This is for the clan.__

He has burns all over his body. He cannot breathe, but he snarls and flings himself at another Shimura, and hesitates for a secondat the resemblance between the shinobi and Alice, even though they are completely different.

The boy - a twelve year old, a twelve year old with an arm wrapped in bandages and a wooden leg that is burning - is knocked out of the way before Kenta can kill him, but the Shimura are retreating.

Nobody follows. Both sides have suffered huge losses. The entire compound is blackened and half of the Hono forces have been taken out.

 _"_ _ _We will get revenge!"__ someone shouts.

And it is then that he realises that he is crying - there are tears blurring his vision. He is mourning for the people that never existed, crying because of the pain that he shouldn't be feeling at his sister's __(a fake)__ and his best friend's __(he doesn't exist)__ deaths.

It is this that pain that makes his father come up with the decision to get revenge on them, to ambush __their__ compound instead.

They would feel the pain. They all would.

He isn't sent on the mission that twenty-five others are sent on, but he smirks when he hears that the Clan Head of the Shimura clan is now deceased. He wants this to carry on, for them to keep on feeling the pain that he has felt, but he knows that it is wrong.

 _ _(Pip would disagree. Alice would disagree.)__

After several months, he realises that this cannot go on, even when his father plans for more ambushes, because the clan members are diminished to only a third of what they were before, and there is a distinct imbalance with two men to every woman.

He tells his elder brother - his eldest brother Kouta, his father's favourite. He was seventeen but had a soft spot for children, especially Kenta. It didn't take much to manipulate him into stopping him and making him listen to reason instead of letting his emotions blind him.

Still, there was one mission underway that could not be stopped beforehand, and Kenta is sent on that mission. It is the one where he sees Naoko, and he knows that he cannot let the feud between the Shimura and the Hono continue.

 _"_ _ _Fire Style: Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!"__

Kenta remembers seeing the girl with her brother, or someone close to her. It had been his plan to split them up. He needed to see her, to talk to her, to know if she was real or not.

He knew that it was Alice when he first laid eyes on her. They had similar appearances, apart from the scars and muscle that Alice never had. They had the same hazelnut brown eyes and hair as black as night, though Alice never had such a bad scowl and deep wrinkles on her forehead.

One of the fireballs managed to hit her, skimming her arm. It took all his self-control to stop from asking if she was alright, but he knew she would be. She - a __girl__ \- had survived for ten years already in a world like this. She could go through more than that, he tried to convince himself. She was strong. She could hold her own.

"I'll deal with this one," he said quickly. He waited for the other two to leave, because this was his chance - his __only__ chance - and he wasn't about to blow it.

He smiled. "It's been a while." He could barely stop the giddiness, the excitement, from bubbling up. She was - she really __was__ Alice! After all this time, after all this searching, it had finally, finally amounted to something.

It would have been much harder had she never been a shinobi or kunoichi, but she was. She was stubborn and she always said that she would be Before. It ensured her safety and she could defend herself, and she __would__ do it, even if she was a girl - because Alice was stubborn and manipulative and sarcastic, and -!

"I-I have never even met you before. You're simply embarrassing yourself by spewing out random nonsense, so stop it," she spat. "It's embarrassing just looking at you, __boy__."

He smiled and let out a laugh - a guffaw, a jolly, kind thing - because she was joking. She __had__ to be joking. She couldn't - she couldn't not remember him. He was her Naruto buddy, her friend, and he - he had literally __died__ for her! "You were always the sarcastic one, weren't you? It's nice to see you haven't changed, after all this time."

He waited for her to laugh and tell him that she remembered him after all this time after giving him a heart attack, as she was always prone to doing. He waited for her to grin and laugh at him, but she didn't. Her expression twisted into something sour.

"Wait… You really don't… remember me?" he asked disappointedly, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Not one bit," she returned, and formed a seal. He backed up in order to dodge, but she turned on her heals and __ran__ , and he realised that the seal was false and had succeeded in distracting him.

"Retreat!" she called. "Retreat! Meet at Point C!" He watched as the other Shimura started running as well, the other Hono hot on their tails. Kenta couldn't follow her. After all this time, he had found her, and after all this time, she had forgotten.

She had forgotten him.

He remembers being in the ambulance. He doesn't remember what comes before that apart from the worry and fear that shot through him, and then he ran around and tried to call for help but nobody was there, nobody helped, and then he remembers the car that wouldn't stop, couldn't stop -!

He was in the ambulance with her.

He had died two days after her, which probably would have meant that he was two days younger than Naoko. He was born a week and a half late, an event that was unheard of in his old world but not so uncommon in his new one, and Naoko was born three weeks prematurely, so he was, in fact, a month younger. His birthday was February 21st and hers was January 18th, not that he had known in the beginning.

A week later, there came a bird. It wasn't a very peculiar bird, because it was brown and speckled with dots like most of the other ones around there, but it had a note tied on its leg and there was a team of shinobi making sure it landed safely.

"A bit extreme, ne?" Kouta had asked him. "All this, just for a bird."

"I guess," he had replied, though he couldn't hide the smile. "Depends what's in it." But he already knew that. Perhaps Alice really had remembered, or had wanted this, as she always said she would Before.

 _"_ _ _If I was in the Naruto world I'd try and make sure people weren't such dickheads like usual," she said, and he snorted. "What? I would!"__

It seemed like the Shimura had beaten him to it.

* * *

 **This is a bit of a plot twist, I know. I'm not really satisfied with the alliance bit and I understand if it seems a bit rushed, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I don't really know how I feel about Pip as a character, however, and I was wondering whether you'd like to see more of him.**

 **Thanks to everyone who has been favouriting/following/reviewing/lurking/read this far and given this story a chance.**


	11. When Things Change

****Chapter 10****

Before, she had cared about shallow things like what to wear to school and what others thought about her, though she also took care to do well academically and musically.

She cared about what others said and thought because other people would judge her, consciously or unconsciously, but all the same, that would be the difference between getting the preferred job or not, because when other people __liked__ you, they gave you opportunities.

Society would judge her, based on her food preferences, the way she talked and dressed and acted and maybe it was because of the image that she constantly had to put up that she found it so easy to lie to others.

Just a little white lie here, things that didn't even matter, but she stored away all these lies and remembered them, because that was the most important part about deception. It wouldn't do to forget your own persona, would it?

Things such as what she got for her birthday last year, her favourite colour, what she had for breakfast that day. The lies would slip out without her realising, and she would play along because she couldn't take back what she said, not after fabricating such a detailed story.

In the end, everyone saw her as a different person. That was okay. She didn't mind. She was different, depending on what they __wanted__ to see in her.

To her teachers, she might have been the dedicated and studious straight-A type of student, while to her friends she was the sarcastic and dare-devilish one in their little group, or the kind and understanding type.

So being a spy was easy for her. All she had to do was lie, very subtly, because being obvious would ruin it all. Gestures - how you laughed, how you greeted them - were much more important that talking, though that played a role too.

She changed herself to __become__ who she wanted to be, who she __needed__ to be, until in the end, she wasn't really sure what __herself__ meant, apart from the fact that she is her, and her is me, because she was no-one and everyone at the same time, and yet she was more aware of herself than anyone else ever could be.

"My name is Naoko. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

A bow, and a smile.

After all, she is the only one who knows all the faces that she puts up, all the lies that she lets slip, the only one who even knows what she is inside - a liar and an insecure brat.

But that's okay. She can hide it.

* * *

Naoko had arrived back at the Shimura compound five minutes late, despite having used chakra to speed up running. She hadn't expected anyone to be waiting for her, but everyone was there.

"Hime," Jirou greeted quietly, dipping his head forwards. In his hands was a bouquet of forget-me-nots that he handed to her. His little sister - the younger Naoko - was crying. She hugged the older girl, mumbling something through her sobs.

Naoko was lost for words. She couldn't say anything. She would cry if she did. She took the flowers gracefully and hurried over to where her brothers and everyone else were standing.

Everyone in the crowd was gathered around them. "Thank you, Hime! Good luck!" some shouted. "We love you! Don't forget us!" others cried. "P-Please accept this gift,"people mumbled shyly, and she couldn't help but smile.

"You were always my idol, Hime! I want to be like you in the future!" a girl yelled loudly, but the only thing that registered in her mind was, __Why would you want to be like me?__

People that she thought hated her were now hugging her and giving her their thanks. People that she had only ever recognised as filler characters, as people who didn't really exist, seemed realer than ever.

A smile danced on her lips as she finally realised: you never know what you have until it's gone, and oh, just how true that was.

She had never realised how lucky she had been Before, and she had never realised how lucky she was now. The Shimura clan wasn't just a group of fighters sent to die anymore. It was her family, her home.

 _"_ _ _We named her Naoko, after you."__

People that she had never thought to remember the names of were suddenly registering in her mind as the boy that helped her when she tripped, the man that she got her ribbons from, and before long there was a mountain of gifts in her arms.

 _"_ _ _You're slow."__

"You're always going to be my best customer. Thank you, Hime," he said, and she already missed the way he ruffled her hair, even though she always used to hate it. She had never made friends, and yet now, she felt like everyone was her friend. She didn't… understand…

 _"_ _ _You're a good kid, Nao-chan. Please don't disappoint me again."__

"Let's go, or we'll be late," the other sacrificial shinobi said nonchalantly. She nodded as they took off, waving goodbye to the other clan members as they disappeared into the distance. The silver brooch was pinned to her kimono. As she leaves the compound - _ _home, her home__ \- she remembers the memories she never cared to remember before.

 _"_ _ _I'll never be able to fight again."__

"I… I don't want to go," she whispered as they finally left, and realised that for the first time in a lifetime, there were tears in her eyes and dribbling down her face. "I don't want to go!" she screamed. "No! Please! Don't make me leave home!" But it was too late. Nobody spoke a word to her.

 _"_ _ _I am proud of you."__

Having the forget-me-nots in her hand made her realise the finality of her decision on an impulse, weighing her down like lead. Isamu squeezed her hand and smiled with a sorrowful look in his eyes.

 _"_ _ _Be s-strong… my baby… okay?"__

She was silenced immediately. She was the only reason that he would be staying home. It was thanks to her. She had taken the responsibility instead of him.

 _"_ _ _Hiroshi Sensei, I brought your favourite."__

She barely spoke through the entire journey, and only muttered a greeting when she arrived at the meeting place. She had never realised the weight of her words at the time. Only now did she know. There was no going back.

 _"_ _ _I love you."__

* * *

During the last day of traveling, she is put in the carriage with the civilians and Elders, and the woman carefully dresses her carefully, though she knows how to do it herself, and applies cosmetics under her eyes to hide the bags. She braids her hair in a complex fashion with no small amount of yanking and tugging, but Naoko does not complain.

The lady is one of her mother's friends, she remembers vaguely. She was the person that cooed over her chubby cheeks when she was one or two years old, the woman who smells like her mother used to __(not Nanami, it's her mother, her first mother)__.

The journey is long and tiring, but Naoko is determined to not whine. She wants to make the most of the few hours she has left with her family.

"You… You look beautiful, right?" says Isamu quietly.

"Thank you," she replies, a faint smile dancing on her lips. He was always the handsome one out of the three of them - the one with the charisma, the charming one. Even after he got an eyepatch and wooden leg, that has not changed.

"I wish you didn't have to do this," Ichiro tells her. "But you… I know you're smart and responsible, and I…" He trails off at the end, his face scrunching up.

Naoko smiles again. "I understand." And she does understand. She understands it all. It was her choice anyway, it was her dream. Sacrifices must be made.

The carriage comes to a halt, and she quickly hugs the two of them and never wants to let go, but she knows she must. She had a fine meal before this. She can't help but feel like it is her last - as if this is her death sentence that she is facing.

She hugged them. She never hugs them.

"Be safe while I'm gone, okay?" she whispers as she releases them and searches for any creases on her kimono, and she realises that her face is wet.

"You too," Isamu says, rummaging around. "Here," he says, dabbing a handkerchief on her face, and she quickly composes herself and tries to blend out the make-up so it is less noticeable.

She plasters on a smile once again as the Hono clan members come into sight, their flaming hair and burning eyes seen a mile away.

The Clan Head greets her brother politely, but they make no small talk. Naoko sees Kenta __(Pip)__ standing behind the Clan Head with his brothers and sisters. There are four children, one girl and three boys, while the second youngest boy is obviously going to be the exchanged one, with a pile of gifts behind him and a bouquet of flowers in his hands.

There is a young woman standing to the side, who also has gifts, though not nearly as many, Naoko notices snidely. She has copper coloured hair and amber eyes with pale skin. She has no callouses or scars and no muscle, and she would be the exact image of a perfect lady, if not for the poor quality of the fabric.

Naoko steps beside the shinobi accompanying her - a man by the name of Keisuke with black hair and brown eyes, and stubble lining his chin and bags under his eyes.

On the Hono side, there are two Clan Elders, as well as the Clan Head's brother and sister, both of whom had a startling similarity to Kenta __(Pip)__ in terms of appearance, with their chalky skin and the shape of their noses and lips and the structure of their faces.

The two Clan Heads walk up to each other, cut their right thumbs with a kunai and write their names on the contract using their blood. She cannot help but notice the slightest quiver in Ichiro's hands as he writes.

Then she steps up beside her eldest brother with Keisuke on the other side, as do the Hono, and they step onto the other side. Isamu gives her a small grin as she now faces him and the other eight Shimura, and her skin prickles weirdly as she feels their gazes on her.

"Please take care of them," Ichiro says quietly. He smiles at her, and she cannot help but wonder if Keisuke had any family. Nobody was there to say goodbye to him, although he received gifts from other clan members.

"Of course," the Hono Clan Head replies.

They bow to each other before each clan leaves. There are civilians with each clan so there is a small carriage, and Naoko enters this small carriage with the Clan Head's sister and daughter, lumping her gifts along with her.

She sees the expression on Pip's face. She can see the smugness concealed under his neutrality, and she feels something inside of her burn in anger, because what right did he have to be __happy__ while she was dying inside?

She unwillingly leaves Keisuke's side and allows someone to help her up, awkwardly perching next to the Clan Head's daughter. The space inside is small and the atmosphere is awkward, because everybody seems to be at a loss to what to do with a Shimura - and an unfriendly, glaring Shimura at that.

As she looks back, she can see the Shimura members leaving as well. Nobody is turning back, but she can see Isamu and Ichiro running and the carriage before them bobbing up and down as the horses slowly lead the way.

 _ _Goodbye__ , she thinks, and her heart aches in a way. She knows that she will never see her family again, but she accepted, she __chose__ this responsibility for her brother, so she cannot cry and cannot try to escape. She knows that she has to leave.

It is what she wanted, after all.

* * *

Madara… doesn't know what to say.

"Hashirama…" he says quietly. "Naoko isn't a spy. She __can't__ be a spy." He has seen the wounds she has gotten, the should-be fatal injuries and scars that would give away her presence as a shinobi instantly.

There was no way she would be able to blend in like that, unless she used a jutsu, but Naoko wasn't subtle like that - at least, not the Naoko that he knew, but the Naoko that he knew was the one that had tricked Hashirama into thinking that she was a civilian, way back before she had gotten those injuries.

"Well she is," Hashirama retorts bitterly. "I don't care. She's sneaky and manipulative, and __very__ subtle. She's so subtle, in fact, that she makes you think that she isn't, but she is!"

"She isn't," Madara replies bluntly. Spies were dirty, the low of the low, the people who did the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. Naoko was a lady, not a spy. She couldn't trick his eyes - she couldn't, and she wasn't a spy. She wasn't.

"She is!"

"She isn't!"

Hashirama sighed. "Well, never mind then. Let's spar today." Madara nodded, even though he __knew__ that there was something that Hashirama was hiding, but it really was none of his business. They sparred. Madara won the match, even though he could tell that there was something on Hashirama's mind, distracting him.

"Remember when she disappeared for seven months?" Hashirama asked. Madara nodded, remembering showing off the sword that he got for his birthday half a year beforehand. He remembers seeing the jealous way that Naoko looked at it, as if she had never gotten something like that before. She probably hadn't.

He had always been weary around the girl. She was too… perfect, in many ways, and yet she was most likely going to be the least perfect person that he knew. Something about her made him feel queasy, and he was always on guard around her.

It didn't help when she had purposefully told him that he had pretty eyes. Naoko wasn't the type to say things like that. She had a purpose behind those words, an intent that he had felt and understood immediately, as an Uchiha who had recently activated his Sharingan.

And it's then that he realises how much __she__ knows - about his eyes, about everything.

He knows that Hashirama feels to same, although to a lesser extent. He rarely does that weird mood swing thing that he does around Madara all the time, and the last two times they have met, he is always watching her when he thinks that she doesn't know, watching her with anger and frustration.

When she had gone for seven months, he had always had that strange ribbon around his hand. It was Naoko's, to be sure, but he had only blushed when Madara asked about it.

 _ _("I never knew she was your__ girlfriend _ _, Hashirama!"__

 _"_ _ _I-It's not like that!")__

Then __that time,__ her chakra level had been dangerously low, and she had looked terrible, to say the least. The girls in his clan would __never__ have gone outside looking like that, even if Madara knew that Naoko had done her best to look decent enough for them, but Hashirama had… for loss of a better word, he had panicked… and hugged her.

Hashirama looked skywards, leaning his head back. "I just wish that…"

"She's never coming back, Hashirama," Madara interrupted. "Stop thinking about her, because she isn't going to return. There's nothing we can do about it."

He knew his words were harsh, but it was true, and Hashirama's weeping wasn't going to do any good. At least they had received a proper goodbye. At least they didn't have any false hope, coming to the Serpent River every day, only to find that Naoko was, once again, missing. There was no point.

"...I suppose you're right," Hashirama replied quietly. "Race to the top of the rock, Madara?" he asked, his mood turning a complete one-eighty. Before Madara could reply, he was already on his feet and running. The Uchiha raced to catch up.

"Heh! I guess I'm faster!" Hashirama laughed boisterously. "Loser!"

"BASTARD! You had a head start!" Madara yelled. "It's not fair to compare our times when you started before me!"

"S-Sorry…"

* * *

Her kimono is getting creased after spending three days in the carriage with nothing to do. She had already opened all of her gifts and sealed them in a scroll. She wasn't stupid. She knew that the Clan Head's fourteen year old daughter wanted one of the combs.

It was ivory with jewels studded on one side, and she had to admit it was pretty, but she had already collected eight of those so far and there was no need for so many combs.

She was annoyed, because it was rude to stare and sigh, but the annoyance subsided after she realised that the girl was still young and innocent, and only fourteen. She would have been like that too, had she not decided to pursue the path of a shinobi. Besides, it would be good to get on her good side, seeing who she was.

"Here you go," she sighed, and wrapped the comb in a handkerchief before passing it to the girl, jealous of the girl's perfect skin and protected innocence.

"Thank you," the girl breathed, cupping the comb carefully. "Thank you so much." She carefully does not roll her eyes, but instead smiles gracefully. "I know you must be feeling homesick right now, but we'll take care of you," the girl says reassuringly, determination in her brown eyes. "Don't worry."

How she wishes it was true.

* * *

Her heart is not in it when she smiles and greets people as she arrives, and it exhausts her, attempting to appear as though she is not hearing their whispers and excited squeals. She is exhausted, even though she hasn't been the one doing all the running and carrying, but she feels heavy and sluggish, and… well, exhausted.

The Clan Head's daughter leads Naoko into one of the rooms inside the clan's Main House, ordering the others to leave, something that Naoko is glad for, as she slumps onto the already made bed in the corner of the room.

Normally, this is when Naoko would probably start organising her things and create lists as to what to do. She had always been a blood Type A sort of person who hated messes, but instead she formed a Shadow Clone, ignoring the drain of chakra as it performed the menial tasks of loading and sealing.

It took much longer than she had expected. Even though originally she only intended to bring a backpack with only the bare necessities, she ended up bringing all her gifts along, which meant that most of her things didn't fit into the room, large as it was.

The room was painted yellow and white with hardwood floors. There were hints that showed someone else had lived in the room for a while, although it clearly couldn't have been for very long, as their old compound had been rebuilt only a few months ago.

Piling all her clothes onto the floor, she chose ten kimonos for different occasions, with half of them for casual situations or training, while shoving the rest in Kauri's - the Clan Head's daughter's - direction.

"Here. Take a look and choose a few," she said, storing several gifts and necklaces into scroll.

"Wha -? Really?" Kauri asked, before selecting three easily. They were the larger and more loose-fitting ones, and probably fit her well enough considering how short she was. Naoko reached the top of her ears despite the age gap, being relatively tall for her age.

It took her a further ten minutes to choose which things to store in a scroll and which to store in her wardrobe, and another ten minutes for Kauri to boss around other accompanying shinobi and finally decide that the bed was better where it was originally.

Naoko could easily have done it herself with a little chakra enhancement, but it was probably better for others to do it as she had limited chakra left, a little over a quarter of her chakra remaining. She tired out easily and had quite a small chakra pool, even for girls her age.

Kauri helped her to get changed into a more formal kimono and for the first time since arriving, Naoko finally felt less on edge with the feeling of the familiar weight of the silver brooch pinned to the front of her clothing.

The Hono compound was very similar to the Shimura one, and yet so different at the same time. It was… exasperating. She felt the urge to cry, but carefully masked her emotions and tried to suppress them so that she wouldn't - __couldn't__ \- feel anything anymore.

It would be humiliating to cry in front of someone else, especially on her first day. That wouldn't do for a first impression at all, would it? She lay on her bed for a while, not really listening to Kauri's mindless chatter but occasionally giving grunts of affirmation.

It was strange how easily Kauri was tricked, especially when Naoko was __trying__ to show that she was tired in a subtle way, and yet it completely went over her head. It occurred to her that perhaps civilians just didn't __notice__ things like that.

"Kauri-sama, Naoko-sama," one of the shinobi grunted. "If you'd care to join us for the banquet." He opened the door, allowing the two girls to exit, before escorting them to the larger hall in the centre of the compound.

She looked around the room, seeing only one other with dark brown hair, everyone else sporting ginger or auburn hair. She froze. Her eyes locked with someone standing behind the seat on the same table as the Clan Head, with two empty seats beside him, where Kauri was already heading towards.

 _ _Hey… Pip.__

* * *

Hashirama was still speechless. He fingered the turquoise necklace. It had been given to him as a birthday gift years ago, and he had never stopped wearing it. It was the first and only thing that he had received that year which wasn't a ninja tool or something similar, but he doesn't remember who from.

Nevertheless, Naoko had never remarked on it before, and he always wore it underneath his shirt. There was no way that she would know about it, unless she was sneakier and much more perceptive than he had thought.

He had been so angry at her - no, that didn't nearly describe the rage that he felt. He was infuriated and couldn't help but feel betrayed - knowing that she had been the one who had spied on his family, the one who had completely __ruined his life__ , the one person that he thought was his friend and the one person that he might have been able to trust outside of his clan, because most of all, it meant that peace could never really be achieved, and that his clan was right.

She was wrong and horrible and stupid and an utter traitor and he absolutely __hated her.__ He was so enraged, and seeing her that morning, chatting to Madara as if nothing had happened had made him see red.

But hearing her words and sensing the sombre ambiance around them, all of that dissipated immediately. __Damn it…__

In the time he had spent rehearsing how he would beat her into a pulp the next time they met in his mind, he had never expected… this.

 _"_ _ _Goodbye."__

Hashirama grabbed the glass vials, his head spinning.

"I need to talk to you." Hashirama turned around and smiled tiredly at Tobirama.

"Not now, Tobir-"

"It's important." Seeing his serious expression, he followed his younger sibling to his father's room in silence and sat down inside, anxiousness settling down in his stomach.

* * *

 **Thanks for all the support with the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed this one just as much as the last. I have a pretty busy weekend so I'm posting it today instead, but I hope everyone is doing well.**

 **Thanks!**


	12. A Fool's Dream

****Chapter 11****

Everyone simultaneously stands up as she enters, and she smiles pleasantly like she has been trained to. She can see every single person there. From one glance, she sees their weaknesses, their strengths, their thoughts and emotions and pasts.

As a spy, as a __murderer__ , she has never noticed it as much as she has now. Years of training have paid off, and even if she is not as good at ninjutsu or taijutsu as the others, and even if she is slow and physically weak and has no stamina, she is still strong, in her own way.

True, her forte lies in genjutsu and senbon, chakra scalpels and poisons, but that is not the secret to her success. That is not how a ten year old girl survived the war with nothing but the clothes on her back.

No, Naoko's success is derived from the terrifying accuracy that she uses to calculate each move, the way she can read her opponent like a book, can trick them and manipulate them and __break__ them. Her success is derived from her subtlety.

She can't help but wonder what is going to happen to her here; if she will remain a shinobi or become a helpless civilian, alongside much, much more. She has no control over anything now, and she has always been a control freak.

Once she thought that she had the upper hand on the world, and on whatever the world would throw at her. After all, knowledge is power, and she had plenty of that. Only now… there was no choice but to agree with whatever the Hono decided to do with her.

She looks around the room and walks over to her seat. The Clan Head sits down, which everyone else takes as a cue to do the same.

To the right of the Clan Head sits his eldest son Kouta, and to his left sits Kenta, with two empty seats on either side of him, and Keisuke at the very end. Kauri takes the seat beside her father, which leaves Naoko with the seat between Keisuke and Kenta. She is pressed tightly against the people beside her and she is barely a meter away from the Clan Head.

 _ _Personal bubble, anyone?__

It is a feast for the fifty or so people. The clan has really diminished since the last time that they met in battle. It would be stupid for the two clans to not completely join forces and __be one.__ At least, that's what she thinks.

She sits in silence while Kauri babbles on quietly to her younger brother, though she acts half her age and he acts twice his. Occasionally she feels the odd look coming from Keisuke, but she is mainly ignored by almost everyone. Everyone, apart from Kouta, surprisingly.

"Naoko-san, you're a kunoichi?" he asks, seemingly genuinely intrigued. She blinks in surprise, because Kouta is sitting by more important officials that he is ignoring, while he talks to __her__. Not just that, but he was so… nice.

"Yes, I am," she replies. "I was a kunoichi who specialised in assassinations, information gathering and torture, though I am also a relatively proficient medic, Kouta-sama."

"Please, just Kouta," the boy replied. He was about seventeen, she would hazard a guess, with dark red hair and a tall build. The feast was unexpectedly nice, welcoming in a way, and her heart didn't ache nearly so much as before.

Keisuke looked constipated, she had to say, when two girls shyly walked up to him, so much that she grinned so much until her face ached.

"My brother talks a lot about you," Kouta said, suddenly quiet and serious. She froze instantly, not bothering to hide it. He grinned and suddenly she felt much more threatened as his hand touched his kunai holster for a brief moment. "What's your current relationship status?"

She choked on the tea. "E-Excuse me?"

Kauri suddenly looked their way and giggled in a way that made her sound five. Kenta, for the first time that day, looked in her direction. She couldn't help but look away from him, even though her body was trained otherwise.

"Kouta, stop bothering her," he said with a sigh. Keisuke raised an eyebrow and continued quietly listening in on the conversation, though he never directly contributed anything himself. He was almost as socially awkward as she was.

They all talked to whoever they wanted to talk to, laughed about and dined together, only leaving five guards around the compound, which explains why the clan is still small, because they are not careful enough.

The warm ambiance sharply contrasts the stiff silence that she is used to. It was not often that she was invited to dine with others, but when it did happen, it felt nothing like it did with the Hono. They were more of a clan, more united between them.

It was as if they weren't simply murderers and children of murderers celebrating the deaths of others. It is similar to the meals they had Before.

"Have a good night!"

And before she knew it, the day was over. And, dare she say it, it hadn't been nearly as bad as she had expected. It was… fun, which means a lot to a person who has never properly laughed, for a person who takes everything much too seriously, for someone who has never known the definition of the word apart from in another world, another life.

But Naoko had, in fact, had fun.

It strangely feels like she's betraying her own clan when she thinks this, but she is happy, for once, in a way that she hasn't been for years and years since another time in another world.

* * *

Madara runs wild when he hears the news. He turns livid, and he wants to rip and tear and __kill__. His little brother has been stolen from him. Not Kazuhito - anyone but Kazuhito, his youngest brother. Izuna was careless in the war and now Izuna is gone, and nobody knows where.

" _ _Why__ did you allow this to happen?!" he roars and the other man cowers back in fear.

"We were infiltrated. We didn't __know__ about Kazuhito-sama's disappearance until we woke up, Madara-sama," he hisses back, and Madara narrows his eyes. "It was probably the Aoi clan, we don't know."

" _ _Then find out!__ "

There was no time. Madara turned, enraged, and stormed into his father's room, finding said man gone, and stormed out again in search for him.

* * *

There is not much to do here. She wants to train, but she is constantly tired, not to mention she starts to cough every time she pushes herself to hard. She rarely meets Keisuke. He is sent on missions frequently and even when he is not, he only ever spends time training. Nevertheless, it's not like he's trying to ignore her.

She has an odd feeling that he's actually trying his best to involve her somehow in his life, even if it's not directly, and in another world, she knows that she'd think it was creepy. Here, it's strangely welcomed.

"Would you like to meet some of my friends, Nao-chan?" asks the Hono heiress. "They're __really__ looking forward to meeting you!" She replies with a silent nod, even though she has never really had friends before. She'd like to try it.

Kauri was… delicate. Innocent, like she had been. She had soft and silky hair and large, doll-like eyes that looked much too like Pip's eyes for Naoko to be perfectly at ease, because Pip… wasn't Pip.

He's not the same as he was Before, when she was the brash, popular girl and he was the shy, nerdy boy, and she almost expected him to be the same, because he smiled the same smile that he always smiled, but he was so different too. Now he's the murderer and she's the liar, and there's nothing more to that.

And despite the fact that Kauri is there, there is tension between them that cannot be resolved, because despite the fact that they have someone - a sister and a friend - in common, they rarely meet, and whenever they meet, they rarely talk. And whenever they talk, it's as if he is uninterested.

He has changed, there's no doubt about that, but maybe she has too. But for now, maybe Naoko should just concentrate on trying not to appear conceited in front of the other girls, though there is no doubt that she is failing.

* * *

"So, you're actually a… shinobi, even though you're a girl, Naoko-san." She smiles and nods, in a half threatening and half complacent manner that gives the other girls the chills.

No matter how many times she verifies the statement, the others can't seem to get their heads around the fact that she __is__ a shinobi, though she shouldn't really have expected anything else. It's a known fact that men are physically stronger and have greater stamina, power and speed.

"What was it like in the war?" asks Takara - the girl with ginger plaits and blue eyes - as she pours the murky tea into cups. "My brother's fighting in the war. He has a scar on his face now," she continues, and pauses for a second.

"I hate feeling so helpless. I wish I could do it too - to fight and defeat the other clans!" the other girl - Saiki - says quietly. "I wish I could be like you, Naoko-san. You're… strong. You're something that I could never be."

 _ _Please. I'm the most loathsome creature to have ever set foot upon this wretched planet.__

"I bet it'd be really cool, though, don't you think?" Takara quickly interrupts. She fist pumps into the air while the others giggle and agree and Naoko cannot - __cannot__ \- stand it anymore because it is so __utterly naive__ and ignorant.

Because this is the place where she learned to kill, where Isamu __almost died__ and it's the graveyard of so many people, people that __deserve__ better, people that they are completely disrespecting, because __nobody should have to fight in the war like that__ \- and they're treating it as a game, and she cannot stand it coming from __children__!

Naoko absolutely hates it, and she cannot hide the absolute __fury__ she feels anymore, and she slams her hands down on the table, snarling as she comes face to face with Takara and lifts a fist - because she __cannot__ stop it anymore, and she almost doesn't care as the porcelain drops from Takara's delicate, unscarred hands in shock, her eyes wide as saucers.

In a split second she realises what she has done and with the greatest amount of shame (not that she'll ever admit it) recognises that what she just did was, in fact, bratty and rude and will certainly not gain her any friends.

"Sorry," she says mildly, however, easily rescuing the porcelain before it hits the floor and shatters, her face once again completely blank, the snarl wiped from her face, replaced by a smile that she has practised more times than she has practised jutsu. "My body just moved on its own."

The entire room is silent.

She sips the tea, feeling cold sweat dribble down her forehead but hoping nobody sees it, ignoring the others around her, her body stiff as a board and her movements rigid.

Making friends is hard. Making friends with enemies is easy. Making friends with acquaintances is not. There is too much to consider - there is no profile to copy from, no expectations or criteria to be matched. You just have to be yourself.

That is most likely the worst thing you could have ever asked of Naoko Shimura - the liar and the queen of deceit, the murderer and the torturer and the sadist who takes pleasure in all of it. She is the one that makes you, just to break you, the one that never lets anything go. She may forgive __(and yet she doesn't)__ but she never, _ _ever__ forgets.

She is the scum of scum, the low of the low, the monster that resides in the body of a child, and she is proud of that. When she is forced to show others what she really is, however, she is ashamed.

The other girls are terrified of her, and she basks in their fear, their innocence, because __they deserved it__ , even if they didn't.

This is justice, to her. This is fair, even if it's not, because __nothing__ is fair in a world like this, and __nothing__ is fair in any world ever - because if there are winners, there must always be losers. Where there is light, there are shadows. Wanting peace only creates wars and hatred and the excuse of protecting love.

Because __she knows__ that it is wrong to try and correct the world and the nature of the world, and she understands it more than anyone else. But if there have to be light and shadows, winners and losers, she will not be one of the ones suffering.

 _ _She will be a winner.__

* * *

"Kenta-san," she says, the smile on her lips completely fake and yet completely genuine all at once, and the simple gestures she make are both friendly and yet threatening.

"Don't talk to me. You're not worth my time," he interrupts, and she barely manages to conceal the hurt and frustration and anger, but she does. Kenta is cold and cruel to Naoko, but Pip is sweet and caring and gentle.

 _ _He needs time.__

Yes. That was it. So she slowly backs away, her expressions carefully masked. "Your father agreed that I would help in the Interrogations department. You are to supervise. We'll be starting in a month," she says quietly. Kenta slowly nods, and despite it all, she feels triumph.

He nodded. A sign of acceptance, of agreement, and maybe of approval. She has his approval, and she will earn his trust, because Alice wants Pip back.

 _ _Naoko__ wants Pip back.

* * *

Eleven years have passed since she joined this world. Eleven. It's a big number.

She spends the day alone, for once, because she does not feel like being with others. She doesn't want strangers to come into her room and congratulate her or disturb her, and she doesn't want gifts from people that have never even talked to her before.

Whenever someone passes her or looks in her direction, she wishes it was Ichiro, or Isamu, or her parents (both sets will do, any will do), or even Hashirama and Madara or perhaps Pip, instead. She's feeling… homesick.

It had been about two months since arriving, and although she has made acquaintances with Kauri, Takara and Saiki, as well as a few other children their age and a few Hono adults that she is required to meet, she wishes she is not quite so lonely, even though she is the one who wants to be alone.

Friends. That's what she needs.

The only problem is that she is the unfriendliest and most socially awkward person in the world, in the entire universe, in every single world and every single universe that exists. There's no way that someone would want to be friends with someone like her.

* * *

"The other clans have started forming alliances too," Kouta tells her. "Outo-san's really worried. The Akimichi clan has attempted to join up with the Nara, and they're all getting much stronger now. The Shimura suffered an attack by these combined forces a few days ago and we had to send some of our limited resources over. What's worse is that the difference in our strength is even greater."

She contemplates this for a second. "What about the Senju and Uchiha? We can get the wielders of kekkei genkai especially, can't we? I've heard that -"

"The Uchiha are too stubborn and absolutely refuse to join with anybody, while the Senju are too strong and their Clan Head will take advantage of our situation. It's a hopeless cause. Nevertheless, the Hono recently acquired an offer from the smaller Aoi clan that we are thinking of accepting." He smiles wearily.

She nods slowly. So much has changed. So much has changed, just because of one person that shouldn't exist in a world that shouldn't exist. Everything is different, and she cannot predict anything anymore as everything is spiraling out of control. Maybe she shouldn't have been so eager at the beginning.

* * *

"Ichiro and Kaya, sitting in a tree…"

" _ _Don't you dare__ finish that."

Isamu grins. "It's her birthday today, right? She's eleven now." There was no need to elaborate on who __she__ was, because there was only one person whose birthday was on January 18th that they actually cared about.

"Yeah," Ichiro replies, looking upwards at the sky. They stay there for a while like that, before Isamu interrupts the silence again.

"I have to go prepare for the joint mission tomorrow with the Hono. They're taking any survivors, I think, right?" he says. "Meanwhile, __you__ can go have fun with Kaya-san, without either of your younger siblings to interrupt."

Ichiro chokes on his spit and his face flushes red.

His younger brother turns serious again, and it is an expression that he recognises immediately. It is his mission face. " _ _She__ is always watching, Ichiro-nii. Don't you dare do it while she's watching," Isamu says half-jokingly, and then Ichiro's red face turns chalky white.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he replies.

"Good," Isamu says, grinning.

 _ _("A-Achoo!" Naoko sneezes while getting chills. "Ugh. I hope I didn't get a cold.")__

* * *

The stone in his hand bears the weight of so much more than just that. Madara looks across the river at the boy standing there - the Senju - and smirks at him.

"First of all, let's just use stone skipping as our greeting," he says, cutting right to business.

"Yes," Hashirama agrees easily. Madara smiles, though it comes out as a smirk, and he skips the stone in the same way that he would use a shuriken. He is confident that it will land where it needs to, and he trusts Hashirama to understand.

The other stone lands easily in Madara's hand, and Madara's eyes widen as he reads the words etched into the stone.

 _ _Run away.__

"Hashirama, I remembered I have something to do today," Madara says.

"I-I see," the other replies. "Then, I'll go home too today." He nods in acknowledgment to the boy that he now knows is a Senju, turns away and makes a mad sprint in the other direction, his eyes darting feverishly in all directions and his legs burning.

It seemed as if the Senju just happened to have the same idea. It was the exact same situation, and the fact that Senju Butsuma and Uchiha Dajima were about evenly matched was clear from their various battles.

Madara turned on his heels, noticing the four shinobi - __his brother Izuna included__ \- and he knows that they are preparing to fight, but neither can get the advantage over the other.

For one split second all he sees is a sword flying through the air and his brother's unguarded self, and all it takes is a split second for the rock to reach its destination before two simultaneous __clangs__ take place.

His father's sword, which had been aimed at Tobirama, falls to the ground alongside Butsuma's, and then a moment of silence happens.

"I don't care who you are. I won't forgive anyone who tries to hurt my brother," Madara says, and faces Hashirama.

Both boys stare at each other. "Madara…" the Senju starts. "Naoko always said…"

I don't care what Naoko said!" Madara snaps. "For all we know, she could be dead by now, anyway!"

He takes a breath and wants to scream and shout and cry - but he doesn't. "Besides, it was foolish of us. What were we thinking? We'll never be able to make that idealistic dream of ours happen." It's as if with Naoko's disappearance, everything has suddenly gone wrong. He feels betrayed and angry and frustrated with the way that things have turned out, but he can't say any of it. What has happened has happened, and he only wishes that the happiness could have lasted longer - even by just a little.

It's in that moment that he steels himself to cut all ties with the boy that he both loves as his brother and despises as his enemy.

* * *

 **Hello again!**

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** **Thanks for reading and giving this story a chance! :)**


	13. Mirror

****Chapter 12****

Her first day of interrogations starts, and she cannot help but feel like a deer in the headlights under Kenta's gaze. He has his arms crossed in a haughty, arrogant way so similar to the Pip that she knows - __knew__ \- as he waits for her to take care of the first prisoner.

It is a boy slightly younger than her, an Uchiha. She takes her kunai and drags it across his precious, closed eyes, taking care not to damage them.

"Your name?" she asks quietly, softly, __deadlier than deadly.__

He is clearly either panicked or untrained, by the fact that he cries out and immediately squawks out an answer. "K-Kazuhito… Kazuhito Uchiha," the little boy replies, and she freezes in her tracks. She turns to Kenta, her head tilting slightly.

"What… what was that?" she asks.

Kenta purses his lips, and for the first time in months, his eyes meet hers, and the only thing she sees in them is panic instead of rage or apathetic coldness. She clenches her fist and releases the kunai, and it falls down onto the ground with a loud clang.

"I am Kazuhito Uchiha," the boy repeats again.

Naoko carefully doesn't freeze, but her eyes meet Kenta's __(Pip's)__ , searching for any hint of doubt, but instead only finds coldness and, __what are you waiting for?__ Kenta __(Pip)__ stands in his usual haughty manner, though his long limbs look more graceful than awkward now than Before, and shrugs one shoulder in reply.

"You get an Uchiha - and the Clan Head's youngest son - on the first day," he says slowly with a smirk, then lowers his voice. "You know how much I hate the Uchiha _ _.__ "

He draws out the name, loud and clear, and it makes her shiver. She's the one who's supposed to be getting into other people's minds, not the other way around, but she finds it so, so difficult to suppress the emotion when it's coming from Pip.

When it's clear that he isn't going to help her out with this, Naoko takes a deep breath and stares long and hard at the little boy, his pale face and wide eyes giving away his inexperience easily.

He looks exactly like Sasuke would, she thinks, as she notes the similarities between the little boy and his brother.

 _"_ _ _I have four brothers," Madara said at last. "Or rather, I had them."__

"And where did we get this Uchiha from?" she asks, her voice ringing out less shakily than she would have thought, years of practice getting the better of her spinning mind. Kenta doesn't reply, and she realises that Kazuhito must have been an alliance offering from the Aoi clan.

She only wonders why this particular boy was brought to her and not someone else - someone else that could undoubtedly be trusted to do the job, and to do the job right - not an eleven year old girl from another clan.

"Just do it," Kenta replies, and his impatience is growing clearer now. She nods, and steps forwards towards Kazuhito silently, and the thin trail of blood stands out clearly from the rest of his pale face. Kenta gives a slight nod of reassurance, and she finds herself feeling much less doubtful than before.

"Where is the Uchiha base?" she asks, and there is no reply. " _ _Where is the base?__ " she asks with more force, and injects the pain serum into the Uchiha's arm when there is only continued silence. She waits for it to start taking effect.

She is familiar with this poison, having used it multiple times for different tortures. The last time she accidentally spilled it on herself. That one drop made her blood boil and her skin writhe, and she can't imagine how much pain Kazuhito is going through.

Although for most torture sessions, her natural sadism comes through, this time Naoko feels… highly uncomfortable. As the boy screams out the answer at last, clawing at his skin and writhing and crying, she finally waves a glowing hand over his arm to temporarily numb the pain, and her own heartbeat calms down as well.

"This is a very simple game, you see. Answer my questions and there's no need for punishment," Naoko says softly, barely able to control her voice. "Next question; what do you know about the Hono clan?"

She only smiles as he screams out in pain, but the only things that she can think of as she uses and re-uses her old tricks are ways to get the little boy out of there.

* * *

( _"_ _ _Why don't you ever smile or laugh? Come on!" Kauri calls from afar.__

 _ _Because I know I'll start choking and die__ , is the only thing that comes up in her mind.)

* * *

Naoko visits the medic again for the second time that month. "Is it getting better?" the medic, a young woman named Karin, asks. Naoko shakes her head silently and the young woman purses her lips and gives a stiff nod.

"I can try to relax your airways and give you something that will stop the inflammation, however there's nothing I can do to stop the cough," Karin says, and Naoko understands. She had anticipated the answer already. "If this continues to get worse, I would recommend for you to stop any strenuous training, however. You understand, don't you?"

She nods numbly.

The symptoms are exactly the same. "How serious is it?" she asks.

"I don't know," comes the reply, but she knows the answer already. She breathes out harshly and bitterly slams a fist down on the table.

She doesn't have that long left, and especially not as a shinobi. She strangely feels disappointed, angry, terrified - she can't find the right word, but she knows that she __hates__ it - at the chance that she might not be able to fight again, even though peace is all she has ever wanted, really.

No need to fight any longer. Peace. She presses her hand against her mouth to stifle any cries and takes a long, deep breath that only results in a coughing fit. __Useless!__ she thinks furiously to herself.

It takes a long ten minutes to calm herself down. "Right, thanks," she says numbly to the medic, but doesn't bother with the medicine. She is tempted to take some, just for the chance that she might live a little bit longer, but she knows that there are soldiers who actually __need__ it.

She slowly leaves the room and, without thinking, follows her feet to the training compound, where there are already several shinobi training, either by themselves or with others, and finally lets loose.

She unrelentlessly pounds the wooden dummies over and over again, until her hands are red and bleeding and blistering. She screams out in fury when, after only ten minutes, her lungs thoroughly __burn__ when they can't deliver the oxygen that is required, and her __situation__ becomes so obvious at that moment.

She stays there for hours, mindlessly and furiously drilling her taijutsu until all the dummies are nothing but splinters painted with her sweat and blood.

She is exhausted afterwards, but she knows that she can do better. She practises her chakra control and performs her only attacking jutsu while standing on water. She practises her aim and the needles all hit dead centre. Her body hurts from head to toe but she doesn't care.

She just feels like screaming.

Kauri doesn't ask any questions when she helps dab rubbing alcohol and water on Naoko's wounds, something that she is thankful for. They sit in silence and the only thing that can be heard is the occasional grunt of pain and the sound of opening a new roll of fresh bandages.

"What is it?" Kauri asks.

 _ _(She remembers her brother Isamu, and remembers his recovery.__

There's always a chance _ _, she repeats to herself, but she knows that she doesn't believe it.)__

"I was just… Nothing…" Naoko replies, and her throat feels dry. For the first time in her life she is tired of her life of lies, and she doesn't want to lie anymore.

To be able to fight was to be able to live. She needed it as much as she needed the oxygen in the air. To be able to fight was to be able to make a difference in a harsh and corrupt world like theirs, and that's the reason she decided to become a shinobi at the age of three.

Fighting, for her, was the only way to become strong in a world where the greatest thing that a little girl can become is a good wife and a good mother. It was why people knew her - because Shimura Naoko was the child of the Clan Head who didn't take shit from anyone, and because Shimura Naoko was the girl who fought in the war and survived.

For it to all be thrown away, now, was to take away the bare bones of who she was. It was the equivalent of taking away a soldier's medals.

She finally understands what Isamu had meant.

She feels like crying and screaming, but the tears and the sounds won't come. She wants to wallow in self-pity for a while, but she knows that something big is happening soon and that she has no time.

So she gets up and hugs Kauri, and it feels so, so strange, but she weirdly enjoys it. "Be strong," Kauri whispers. "You're the only one of us two who can actually fight, after all."

She realises that Kauri doesn't think of her as a younger sibling or even a child, but rather as an equal and a friend that she can be proud of. She realises that Kauri is relying on her, and so she forces herself to be strong - for Kauri.

That's when she finally allows herself to smile.

* * *

The tenth day of interrogations is nothing new. The eleventh is when things change.

The Uchiha little boy is locked up in the dungeons as always, and the key is handed to Naoko. There is a rotation, and every eleventh day it is her turn to guard the prison with the Uchiha boy. It is a great responsibility, but Naoko can only wonder what it means.

Her shift lasts twelve hours, but Naoko has suffered much worse. At midnight she heads underground, the heavy, metal key hanging from her neck by a long rope, and switches with the previous guard.

The shift is uneventful, apart from the coming and going of a little boy carrying a meagre sample of food and water who changes the pot of waste products. Naoko feels uneasy. She can feel the weariness and desperation rolling off the boy in waves.

"Do you think my brothers are still alive?" the boy asks, his voice cracking and dry. "Do you know them, Mister? I think I'm slowly turning mad. I think I can see them here, but I know they're not. They would have gotten me out by now."

Naoko stays on guard and doesn't answer, just like she's supposed to.

She knows that he has attempted to escape multiple times already, and that there's a chance of it happening again today, but she doesn't know whether she'd have the heart to stop him in that case.

More than once she wonders the same question that the boy had asked - whether or not Madara was still alive. She strangely misses him, and there's a dull ache in her heart.

Her cheeks are flushed by the time her shift is over and she is due to meet Kenta.

"You're an hour late," he says, unimpressed.

"Sorry," she replies, though her head is rushing with thoughts and she really feels anything but sorry. "My shift ended at nine."

He raises an eyebrow and hands her the file for a case. "What shift?"

"It was my turn to guard Uchiha Kazuhito today. I'm going to be late every eleventh day from now on."

His eyes strangely gleam at that, she thinks, or maybe it is just a trick of the light, but he makes no comment about it, instead choosing to talk about the case, though both their minds are distracted and neither are really paying attention.

* * *

There is a rumour going around concerning Naoko.

 _ _("Madara…" the Senju starts. "Naoko always said…")__

Every child by her name is under suspicion of treachery to the clan, and she can only hope that her acting skills are good enough this time, because this time there are two people that she knows she cannot hide the truth from, and she doesn't know who to trust anymore.

 _ _(How does Mihara know? He couldn__ _'_ _ _t have known. He couldn't be from Before.)__

"It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't," she says.

"...I believe you," the others say. She knows that they don't, but there is nothing she can do anymore.

She can't help but avoid Kenta's eyes now. She knows that there is suspicion and accusation in them and she can't face it anymore. Lies, more lies. She should have known that karma would get back to her.

* * *

The Aoi clan is small, but dangerous. Its members' kekkei genkai is composed of an ability to shapeshift both body and chakra, and their subtlety is definitely to be feared. Looking at the boy before her, Naoko is automatically on guard.

"Nice to meet'cha, Nao-chan!" the boy calls, his clan's customary white-blond hair gleaming in the light. He holds out a hand that Naoko does not take, and his dark eyes narrow at the obvious sign of hostility. "That was rude, eh, Ken-chan?"

The Hono rolls his eyes. "It doesn't matter. Is it ready yet, Mihara?"

He nods and suddenly lowers his voice considerably so that Naoko has to strain in order to hear. "Up and ready to go, whenever you are. Just give the signal, Ken-chan."

 _ _What are they talking about?__ Naoko immediately thinks, but ignores the thought. She was brought here to meet the Aoi clan heir, and she has. Surely snooping on Pip was not the way to earn back his trust.

* * *

The formal signing of the alliance between the Aoi, Hono and Shimura clans takes place nearly three weeks after Naoko's twelfth birthday, and it is surprising how much has happened in that time. An entire year has passed since she first arrived.

For one, Saiki - Kauri's friend - became married at the age of fifteen to a strong shinobi nearly six years older than her. It is terrifying to think that this could be happening to Naoko in a few years, and there is nothing she could possibly do about it. It is clearly not a love marriage, but Saiki seems happy enough and to tell you the truth, Naoko never cared much anyway.

The Senju clan formed into an even stronger one, and Naoko knows that Hashirama has taken her advice, and there is a warm feeling in her heart. It feels like something big is coming up, and Naoko is constantly on edge, but she strangely welcomes the feeling, waiting to be swept up by the tsunami without fighting.

Naoko turned twelve. It's not that big of a difference, but the entire clan feels a need to celebrate it anyway, with many strangers going up to her and wishing her a happy birthday. It's not completely unexpected, but her heart still fills up with joy when they do this.

She gets a scroll from the Shimura clan, and on it has her brothers' handwriting, among many others that she does or doesn't recognise. She hangs it up in her bedroom and smiles whenever she sees it.

She has stayed at the Hono compound for ten months already, and yet it still doesn't feel quite like home. Time has passed quickly, but the days are boring and long. She doesn't go on missions that give her that thrill anymore.

The only things she ever does are interrogations and torture with Kenta, and paperwork. She has been hired as one of the clan's many office assistants. She trains, and so even if her skills aren't deteriorating, they certainly aren't improving either. Maybe that's why.

Tossed away like a used toy, she's just another one of those many, many warriors deemed useless. To be fair, she doesn't blame them. After all, she's only there for the alliance.

Madara's younger brother was kidnapped. Jirou's younger sister, Naoko, died from natural causes, and meanwhile, Shimura Naoko has been training her butt off. Training her butt off playing the biwa, that is, because she still does not have a teacher and she is not good enough to train herself efficiently.

The ceremony and greeting for the Aoi and Shimura clans is eagerly anticipated, but Naoko is not allowed to attend as a young girl with no credibility or worth. She hopes to catch a glimpse of someone - __anyone__ \- but before she even notices they have already come and gone, and there is a faint feeling of betrayal in her heart.

"Nao-chan!" calls Kauri from afar, pouting and skipping up to the younger girl. "Why don't you ever smile or laugh? Come on! I want to pick out what I want to wear!"

Naoko nods and goes along with her, a single sound playing repeatedly in her mind like a drone.

 _…_ _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

* * *

 _ _The Aoi clan is small, but dangerous. Its members' kekkei genkai is composed of an ability to shapeshift both body and chakra, and their subtlety is definitely to be feared.__

The most terrifying thing about Aoi Mihara is not his kekkei genkai, or even his skills in fighting. The most terrifying thing about Aoi Mihara is that he is an Aoi through and through, and nothing gets past him.

He walks through the compound, and he notices things that nobody else would. He can tell that this boy had a fight with his father, and that girl is self-conscious about her weight, despite never having met them before. He can take one look at a person and see right into their souls.

Shimura Naoko is just like any other of them.

Her deepest desire is to be acknowledged, though if you asked, she'd tell you that it's to protect her loved ones. She thought she was better than she really was, and cared more about her appearance than she'd ever admit. Although she didn't know it, she was secretly a hoarder. That was all as per usual. But what interested him most of all… was her past.

Full of mystery. She was hiding something - that much was obvious, but what? Her actions didn't align with her personality. Her upbringing didn't align with her sense of morality.

Most people were simple beings. They did what they wanted and wanted what they were taught to want and what others wanted. Shimura Naoko was simply... odd. An anomaly.

"Nice to meet'cha, Nao-chan!" he calls, and he holds out a hand that Naoko does not take. He knows that she has underestimated him, although she has probably already warned herself not to. If they were ever in a fight, he'd win, hands down, blindfolded and hands tied behind his back.

After all, despite her previous title as a 'prodigy', he knows that Naoko is nothing special anymore. He has seen many others like her rise and fall - a blade that has dulled and weakened and snapped. He is different.

 _ _The Aoi clan is small, but dangerous. Its members' kekkei genkai is composed of an ability to shapeshift both body and chakra, and their subtlety is definitely to be feared.__

Mihara takes this one step further.

 _"_ _ _Is it getting better?"__ the medic asks. Naoko shakes her head silently and the young woman purses her lips and gives a stiff nod. Mihara watches silently, completely unnoticed by the others. It is too easy, he thinks. He had expected much, much more from her. He forms a hand seal and disappears into a cloud of smoke.

Mihara is strong, and he doesn't need to prove it to show it. He'll prove it enough when Kenta gives the signal and their plan starts to fall in place.

After all, although Mihara's almost freakish observatory skills are definitely his most terrifying trait, he'd say that his ability to blend in comes as a close second, and you can't blend in if you already stand out.

* * *

Naoko hasn't been on a mission in a long time. It feels nice to get back into the rhythm of things, to feel the thrill and fear of war and death, and despite what her morals tell her, she secretly loves it.

She has been tied to her work in Torture and Interrogations with Pip - but the work they do gets boring and repetitive and there is no thrill that rushes through her veins anymore, even when there is a victim to play with. She does more paperwork than anything else, despite being barely literate, and sometimes she even gets attached to them.

 _ _(Uchiha Kazuhito's name rings clearly through in mind.)__

She hasn't gone undercover as a spy for years, it seems, and she cannot help but wonder if the years of training she received when she was younger has all gone to waste. The scars that litter her body restrict her, and she cannot even pass off for a civilian anymore.

She is no longer needed, she feels, and she hates it.

Naoko stares at the mirror, and stares back at the reflection of herself. She has gotten so used to the scrawny face of a child warrior that she can't even tell who is staring back at her through the glass.

It is a girl, long, black hair in two elegant braids, tied with red ribbons. Her dark eyes are sharp, and although her face retains its angular shape, her cheeks are chubby with baby fat. She is clothed in simple, civilian clothes, distinguished only by the good fabric that they are made from. The only thing that gives away her status as a shinobi is her skin.

The girl is pretty, Naoko thinks, so much more so than Shimura Naoko is supposed to be, and then she realises. She doesn't look like a warrior or spy like Naoko does. The girl looks like Alice.

Shimura Naoko, killer, liar and sadist, does not belong in the world that Hono Kauri lives in, or the one that Alice Moore lives in, or even the world that Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara from the Future-Past live in.

By all the rules that Naoko used to believe in, all and any traces of Alice should have completely disappeared by now. It doesn't make sense for Naoko to be Alice, and even if it is part of the process of reincarnation, Naoko shouldn't know about Alice.

 _ _What am I doing here?__ she asks her reflection.

 _ _I don't know__ , her reflection replies.

She gracelessly scrambles up, changes her clothes and hauls on her armour. She packs a stack of senbon needles and a pouch of soldier pills and protein bars. It has been a while since Naoko has been on the battlefield, and she can only hope that her skills haven't become rusty.

Shimura Naoko is heading on a mission.

* * *

 **Happy Valentine's Day! Here's to all the single people out there, as a token of my love and appreciation.**

 **How was the chapter? If there's anything I missed or you would like to see later - whether it's a certain character or anything - please feel free to point it out or tell me, and I'll try my best! Thank you for your reviews and ideas last week. I love hearing your thoughts.  
**

 **Thank you for everyone who has read this far or given this story a chance. When I published the first chapter, I thought that maybe only 10-20 people at most would read it, and now this story already has over 50 favourites and 85 follows, so I'm really glad I posted it! If you would like to, please follow/favourite or leave a review!**


	14. Friend and Enemy

****Chapter 13****

It takes nearly four hours for the squad of twenty to arrive, and by then the only remains of the original team are their corpses and ashes. The sky is black and the moon barely visible through the clouds of smoke. There is only silence.

Naoko feels sickened at the metallic and burning smell of the air that she breathes, and her eyes water from the smoke. She coughs into her arm and bites into her hand to stop.

The telltale signs of a fight are there; bodies and weapons strewn around carelessly, small streams of blood running through the ground, the lingering traces of chakra, not to mention the craters and burning trees. She takes one look around and knows that none of the bodies are of their enemies. They must have been dead for hours.

"The squad was ambushed during the late evening and requested for back-up. One of their members managed to get a summon to our Clan Head," Keisuke says. "There is nothing we can do now but turn back the way we came. We'll leave as soon as dawn arrives."

The others chorus out a 'Sir!' and the bodies are hauled into one pile after having their bodies searched for any spoils, but they are bare. One of the Hono does the honours and lights the fire. Against the dark background of the sky, it is the only light, and the bonfire burns yellow and red.

It reminds her of her mother's death, and Naoko clasps the brooch tightly in her hand.

The squad settles down, constantly alert and vigilant, and silence befalls the night once again. Naoko feels strangely lonely, but stands close to Keisuke. She yawns.

"If you're tired, you should go to sleep," he tells her. She smiles. His expression looks constipated, and it reminds her of her father's permanent scowl. He is almost like a father figure, though he is only a fleeting presence in her life.

"It is alright. I'm not tired," she replies, but she lies down to sleep anyway, trusting Keisuke to wake her up when dawn comes.

* * *

It is the dead of night but Naoko wakes, alert and fully awake, just in time to hear the explosion take place. She wheezes as the wind is knocked out of her and she is blown back by its impact and thrust on the ground like a rag doll. Her ribs ache, but she ignores it.

"I see you fell for the same trick that they did, then," says one of the enemies as the smoke clears. There are three pairs of gleaming, red eyes and three young men - boys, even. Her eyes widen a fraction, focusing on one of the three, though the action is unnoticeable to anyone with an untrained eye.

The oldest Uchiha, with long, dark hair in a ponytail, seems only to be about twenty, while the second, a boy with cropped hair, is about fifteen. However Naoko's eyes only see the youngest member of the trio. Madara doesn't seem to have noticed her, only staring at Keisuke, the leader of the group.

She scrambles onto her feet.

"Fire Style: Great Flame Technique!" the Hono all shout simultaneously, red-hot fire spewing towards the same spot, and for a second Naoko almost thinks that they have won.

 _"_ _ _Too slow."__

She feels the air around her burning, and takes a deep breath before plunging into the ground, dodging the flames by a hair, only resurfacing when she runs out of oxygen, and by then, the battle has already started.

There seems to only be a trio of warriors from the enemy, but Naoko can easily understand why. Those three Uchiha can easily overpower their entire squad.

It's so obvious that she doesn't even entertain the thought of winning against the trio, but only thoughts of survival run through her mind. She panics, watching them on the battlefield as they get beaten down over and over again, meanwhile the Uchiha don't even seem to be paying attention to the battles.

The five medics dash around frantically, trying to heal the injured, and Naoko barely manages to deflect the shuriken aimed at the medics with her own senbon. "Go!" she shouts. "Leave! There's no point in staying if you can't fight!"

The medics - all young women around her age - nod and scramble away. One of the Uchiha - the teenager - turns his attention to them, spewing out red fire to block their path.

"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" Naoko screams, blocking the shuriken coming in their direction and putting out the fire, and the medics take cover then run.

She can barely see her enemy in the darkness, but Naoko takes her senbon and throws them at the Uchiha, who is moving as a blur, and he dodges it. She grabs a second, and a third, and targets the Uchiha in a way that only a trained assassin with years of practice can, cornering him and targeting him from his blind spots.

The Uchiha have the advantage in the night, but they have the advantage of numbers.

She can tell that he is barely managing to avoid them all, but the Uchiha still deflects every single one of them. His red eyes gleam in the darkness while her senbon, unseen and unheard, pierce through the air. They are evenly matched, for a while, and neither can hit the other without getting hit themselves.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" the Uchiha shouts, and Naoko rolls to avoid it, barely avoiding a major injury, but the fierce battle continues and Naoko doesn't hesitate a beat.

She whips out another pack of senbon, and he takes out his shuriken. Neither can hit the other, but both come very close. She deflects and dodges all of his shuriken, and he does the same with her senbon. Each weapon is thrown with startling accuracy, concentration, power and speed, but neither relent.

"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower!" the Uchiha shouts.

She takes a deep breath and disappears into the mud, then appears again, continuing on with the unrelenting shower of senbon.

"You're pretty good with those senbon," the Uchiha says through gritted teeth. _"_ _ _But what happens when you don't have any left?"__

Naoko moves to get another senbon, but her hands grope at only air. Her body is still moving too quickly for her mind to keep up. A shuriken grazes her cheek. It takes a millisecond too long for her to realise the implications.

By then, she is sailing through the air before hitting the ground hard, clutching her stomach and crying out in pain. She chokes on the blood in her mouth and spits it out, only just dodging another attack.

The Uchiha slows down to a halt, panting but otherwise unharmed. She stands there, her arms and legs burning, panting, waiting to regain her breath. She presses a glowing hand to her stomach and feels the chakra drain as her head spins.

Her entire stack of senbon has been used up, but Naoko hasn't hit him once.

It doesn't mean that she'll give up, though. "Don't underestimate me!" she roars and furrows her brows in concentration and pours her chakra into three intricate webs of genjutsu that she casts on the Uchiha. "I can still fight!"

He breaks out of the genjutsu easily. "Earth Style: Tearing Earth Turning Palm!" they both shout, and it is only then that Naoko remembers the powers of the Sharingan. She flails around, trying not to get crushed by her own jutsu.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" the Uchiha shouts, and Naoko resorts to hiding in the earth again to avoid the jutsu before resurfacing. She starts running away, hoping that it will buy some time for someone else to come and help her.

"It's useless," the Uchiha says, appearing behind her and knocking her forwards. She rolls just in time, but as she gasps for air, wheezing and coughing, she knows that it really is useless.

The battlefield is painted red and black with blood and ash. Out of the five medics, three of their bodies lay motionless on the ground, shuriken embedded in their bodies. The other two, evidently injured with burns and cuts, are dodging and running from Madara, who is only half-heartedly chasing after them.

Six other Hono are slumped in a bloody pile, their bodies contorted into unnatural positions with thin slits all over their bodies. Keisuke is fighting against the last Uchiha, and although they seem evenly matched, he is barely managing. The other Hono are all trapped in a genjutsu that they can't seem to escape from.

"What…?" Naoko whispers, and he takes advantage of this moment of hesitation to shove her on the ground and grasp her tightly with her hands behind her back. It's a good thing that she's always been flexible, because Naoko's pretty sure that otherwise she'd be screaming out in pain.

"Mangekyou Sharingan," the Uchiha then explains smugly. "Naka-san has recently awakened his Mangekyo Sharingan and is currently testing out its abilities on your friends."

Her heart constricts at this and her mouth feels suddenly dry.

All the pain in her body that she felt before is suddenly increased by a tenfold. She looks at Madara, who has by then finished killing all of the medics and hauled them onto the bloody pile of other bodies. He doesn't look in her direction, but she knows that he has seen her, and that is enough for her.

She trusts him, in a weird way, and in her heart knows that he will help her out, even if her mind screams otherwise.

"Why aren't you helping out that other Uchiha - what's his name? N-Naka-san?" she asks through gritted teeth, determined to keep surviving, keep stalling, even if it's only for a few more seconds.

"Huh?" the Uchiha asks, then looks at the Uchiha who is currently fighting Keisuke. "Ah, I would, but it's best not to get in his way when he's fighting someone strong, like that guy. Naka-san would get so mad at me and increase my workload even more… He's a real slave driver, you see," he says, with a hint of bitterness.

She is surprised that he has revealed his information about himself, and is reminded once again that even enemies are human, and she is almost surprised at how surprised she is.

"I kinda wish that you'd have put up more of a fight, to be honest. Now I have nothing to do but wait, and I'm not even allowed to kill you," the Uchiha then says, and she furrows her brows in confusion, staring at the pile of bodies not far from them.

"Your hair is brown, right?" he asks, grinning, holding up a strand, and then Naoko realises what he means. She struggles against his hold, but his grip is strong and she only manages to hurt herself further.

 _ _They're going to hold her as a prisoner, just like the Hono did with Kazuhito.__

She watches helplessly as Keisuke, his body bloodied and bruised but still functioning, keeps on attacking Naka, never looking upwards at the Uchiha's eyes, never giving Naka a chance to put him under a genjutsu. But by now it's obvious that Keisuke isn't going to survive the fight, even if he wins.

Keisuke was her last hope, she realises sadly.

It only takes a second, but in that second multiple things happen and she doesn't register any of them. She hears a scream, a strangled cry, and a huge bang, and then she is blown back a good twenty metres from the force of the explosion.

* * *

 _ _You can always smell the war before seeing it__ , Naoko thinks.

Its smell is the most distinctive feature. The burning and rotting and decomposition of flesh, the slightly charred spoils and weapons strewn on the ground around the battlefield, the metallic tang of blood - you can smell it from miles away, before you even see or hear it.

Naoko hits the ground with a dull thunk, and although she cannot see or hear anything, she can smell it, and she knows at least that she is still alive.

* * *

Shimura Keisuke is a loyal man. He's the sort of man who will never break a promise, and the sort of man who will never betray your trust. He's the type of person that you can depend on, and everyone knows it. It's why he was entrusted as the leader of this mission.

That's right. The mission. The mission to protect Naoko. He doesn't know if he was successful or not, but he tried his best.

 _"_ _ _What is it, Ichiro-sama?" he asks, feeling nervous at the sight of the fifteen-year-old boy sobbing before him.__

 _"_ _ _Please… I know… I know that I'm being pathetic. I know that I shouldn't be asking you this, Keisuke-san. But please… Please keep my little sister safe."__

 _"_ _ _...Of course, Sir."__

In that last battle against Uchiha Naka, Keisuke knew that he was overwhelmed. Perhaps he thought, somehow that he might have been able to win, if he just tried hard enough. They were very closely matched, Naka and Keisuke, and the difference in their abilities was minuscule, but Keisuke was still the weaker of the two.

Maybe he knew it, deep down. He knew it with every blow that he took and every jutsu that he used, every last step and every last bit of energy, and he doesn't know why he hadn't stopped the fight there and then.

He had been enjoying it too much to stop, probably, and although he knew that there was no chance of winning, maybe he just wanted to keep surviving for just a few more last seconds. He doesn't know why he did what he did. He just did.

 _"_ _ _I win."__

He feels the cold metal pressing against his throat and knows that he has lost the battle. He hears the ringing of Ichiro's voice in his mind and he knows that there is only one option left.

 _"_ _ _No you don't,"__ he replies, and then there his body tears itself apart.

The result is an explosion - a gigantic, terrific explosion. He wants the explosion to leave a mark on the world forever - a sign of him, because he doesn't want to completely go, even if he has to leave.

A suicide bomb. He can only hope that Naka was killed with him.

As his body falls, he knows in his heart that he wants to keep on living, to keep on surviving, but he also knows that there's nothing he can do about it. The black and red of the world around him fades into pure black, and then white.

"Who are…?" he tries to ask, but it feels like he is sinking, sinking into another world and he is too tired to move or to resist.

 _"_ _ _Shh…"__

Although his heart had already stopped beating, his body had been torn to shreds and his mind had stopped working, that, Keisuke knows, is the moment that he truly dies.

* * *

When she wakes up, Naoko is the only person on the battleground who seems to be up. She closes her eyes, and when she can't sense the chakra signatures of anyone other than herself, Madara and the Uchiha that she had been fighting against. She seemed to be the only survivor of the original twenty.

Her ears are popped and she feels disorientated, but she doesn't seem to have been injured badly by the explosion. She crawls up, her limbs feeling like jelly, and walks towards the corpses on the other side.

Naka's body lay opposite Keisuke's, whose body had been torn into shreds. There was a gaping hole where his chest should have been. The other Hono, trapped in the genjutsu, had all been killed by the explosion or died from blood loss. Madara was knocked out cold with a large burn on his arms and chest and the other Uchiha was barely alive.

His body was splattered with blood and there was a burn on his back and the backs of his arms and legs. Naoko knew that she had been sheltered by his body during the explosion, because otherwise she wouldn't have been in the condition she was in now.

She picks up one of the littered shuriken on the ground and slowly walks towards him. He is stirring, and his head rolls to the side. "Okaa-san?" he mumbles softly, and although her heart softens for a second, she doesn't hesitate when bringing the weapon down.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and she means it.

She forces it through his throat until the shuriken pokes out from the other side. It makes a soft squelching noise and blood flies from his mouth and onto her so that her face and clothes are drenched in blood.

 _"_ _ _Tch__ , _"_ she says quietly.

She wipes her hands on her clothes and armour, then grasps the silver brooch and holds it tightly in her hand. There is a large crack through the middle between the gems, but it remains intact. She puts it back on again.

She walks towards Madara. In his current condition, she doubts that he will die, but she also can't bear to see the boy - her friend - in pain.

She takes three soldier pills and swallows them, knowing that it is over the limit, then takes a deep breath and focuses chakra to her hands. It flickers for a second before working, and the burns on Madara's skin slowly disappear and new skin regenerates. There is a lot of blood on his body, but the majority of it doesn't seem to be his.

Her chakra runs out a little bit later, and her wheezing turns to coughing and her coughing results in blood. She spits it out and wipes away the blood around her mouth. Her own body aches, but she doesn't mind so long as Madara gets better.

She climbs up onto her feet and starts walking home. The sun is rising, and she stares at the sky, pink and orange and lilac. It's what helps her carry on.

 _"_ _ _Wait."__

The voice is quiet, barely audible, but it cuts through the silence like a knife. Naoko stops immediately and turns around. Madara stands opposite her, a few metres away. His expression is masked impressively into pure coldness, but she can tell how he is feeling. It would have worked on anyone else, but Naoko is - was - a spy, and she can read through it.

"It's only been a few months, but you've grown a lot, Madara," she says, and it's true. She's always been relatively short, but so has Madara. Now he seems to tower over her. His hair has grown longer, and he has stopped looking so much like a boy, now. He looks like the man in the Future-Past who will try and defeat the Five Nations.

"Why did you help me?" he asks, deathly quiet.

He's changed a lot. Gone is the boyish mischievousness and grin that he used to have, and instead it has been replaced by a cold, blank stare that sends shivers up Naoko's spine. Then his face twists into a look of pure fury, and he pins her down by her throat until she struggles to keep breathing.

 _"_ _ _Why?"__ he screams, breathing heavily. His eyes unconsciously turn red, and Naoko notices the extra tomoe in each eye. "I didn't ask for your help! You should have left me to die there like everyone else! You killed Shouto, didn't you? Why did you let me live and not them? I don't __need__ you to help me!"

He pauses, waiting for a reply, but Naoko remains silent. His face is flushed red and his hands are shaking. His expression returns to neutral, and then he suddenly releases his grip on Naoko and she clumsily falls to the ground, wheezing. He turns away from her and faces the other way.

 _"_ _ _Stay away from me.__ "

In half a second he has travelled fifty metres, and Naoko can't find the energy to chase after him or call out. She knows a lost cause when she sees one.

She turns to the corpses on the ground, then bows her head for a second before making her way back. What happened with Madara takes a second to sink in, but when it does, there's a lump in her throat and her face is twisted into an ugly expression. Her entire body shakes uncontrollably as she slowly hobbles away.

She suddenly isn't hungry or thirsty and her body stops hurting completely, and instead feels completely numb. There is a horrible, tight feeling in her stomach that she can't get rid of.

* * *

As she walks, there is only one thought on her mind.

 _ _I should have done something.__

She curses herself, releasing a mangled cry into the silence of the night. " _ _Why?__ " she roars. "Why didn't you do something? __Why?__ " Her entire body racks with sobs but her eyes aren't wet. She stamps her feet on the ground.

She is the lone survivor of a massacre. Keisuke gave his life for her. She couldn't help any of her teammates, and in the end, let the enemy escape after healing him. She's useless and a traitor and a friendship-destroyer.

"Why?" she whispers, gazing at the hot Sun in the sky. Her feet and legs ache, she has barely any chakra, and she is suffering from the drawbacks of taking three soldier pills at once - nausea and a migraine. She finishes the rest of her protein bars and water after vomiting somewhere.

The twelve hours that she suffers through all blur together, and it is a miracle that she doesn't meet any people along the way, because she knows that she is in a pathetic state right now.

Her feet keep walking, however, because she also knows that she has no other option right now than to keep going.


	15. Stay Away

****Chapter 14****

"It's getting worse." Naoko nods at Karin, who sighs. "I've already told you that there's nothing I can do. You're just going to have to deal with it."

"How serious is it?" she asks, expecting the usual, 'I don't know.'

"Very," she says instead, and Naoko's heart seems to stop. "At this point, even if you stopped all vaguely strenuous activities, I wouldn't be able to guarantee that you'd live to twenty. I highly doubt that you'd even manage to live a normal life as a civilian."

There is a pause as her words sinks in. "Then I can go all out, then?" Naoko asks quietly.

The medic purses her lips and sighs. "I know that I couldn't stop you, even if I tried. But if you really are going to continue with the shinobi route, I'd recommend that you start… saying your goodbyes." Naoko laughs once bitterly, her fists clenched tightly in fists.

"Goodbye, Karin-san," she suddenly interrupts. "I'm grateful… for everything."

* * *

There is a note addressed to her from the Clan Head on her desk the next morning, along with a scroll, a small wooden box and a pouch of coins. "Keisuke's closest relative, huh?" she says to herself quietly. "He never did seem to have any friends or family."

The pouch of coins she stores away with the rest of her life savings. Combined, it makes just over seven hundred ryo - the equivalent to about seventy US dollars or fifty pound sterling, she calculates, but in that world at that time period, it's worth a lot, considering the fact that you can probably buy a loaf of bread for a single ryo in the poorest areas.

The wooden box has a chakra sensor on it, and although she would be able to open it if she wanted to, Naoko feels strange about invading his privacy. She hides the box at the bottom of one of her desk drawers and doesn't think about it again.

The scroll has crimson red and moss green velvet binding on the outside and is absolutely huge, and although it is obviously quite old, it has clearly been carefully looked after. Naoko knows what it is before she even opens it.

Her previous sluggishness has completely disappeared, and her previously aching limbs and joints seem to have fully healed. She's excited. Although it's a horrible reminder of Keisuke's death, she doesn't care so much anymore.

She'll look at it later, she decides, and puts it away as well.

* * *

"Kenta-san," she says quietly. He turns back, his eyes narrow and glaring and cold. It's an expression that doesn't look right on him, and her mind turns completely blank. Her heart is racing and her hands are clammy. She's __terrified__ of him, for some reason. "Please… Please help me with training."

She smiles and bows like she has been taught to, though she knows that it is an imperfect mask. It's pathetic, really, she thinks. She is a master of disguise who can lie her way through the most dangerous of situations. When faced with something like certain death, she won't even blink.

…Except all her defences and all her masks seem to crumble against Pip, the single exception, and she doesn't know why or how.

"No," he says curtly without even a hint of hesitation, and silently turns to leave. Mihara raises his eyebrows so high that it'd seem comical in another situation. She lets out a breath that she didn't know she had been holding. Truth be told, she had completely forgotten his presence.

"Hey, Ken-chan, that's no proper way to speak to a lady," he jokes lightly. His eyes turn abruptly sinister and sharp and Naoko feels a sudden urge to hide beneath the desk. "Nevertheless, what did you expect?" he asks her mockingly, laughing cruelly.

"Mihara-san…" she says softly, feeling slightly hurt, and then a flash of anger.

 _He had no right!_

 _ _He__ wasn't part of this. __He__ didn't understand. __He__ didn't know the Kenta that she knew. __He__ didn't know what either of them had suffered through. Hell, __he__ wasn't even Kenta's friend! What right did he have to say something like that? None! __None!__

He was so… __so…!__

"Well… Well you're a potato!" she screams after them, and her face pales before flushing beetroot red as she realises what she had just done.

It is a surprise to her when Kenta lets out a snort and starts to laugh, and she is reminded of the boy buried deep inside of him. It's what Pip would have done, and she feels vaguely reassured. It is worth the humiliation she suffered, even if Kouta refused to stop bringing it up for the next three weeks.

* * *

When she leaves to one of the training rooms, the room is huge and completely devoid of people, save for herself. She feels completely isolated, but tries not to focus on that as she takes out Keisuke's scroll from her bag.

She opens it and carefully cuts her right thumb using her new blade, then writes her name on the scroll beside the others before forming the hand seals.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

The world goes black around her.

 _ _Well,__ she thinks. __That could have gone better.__

* * *

For the next two weeks she is given time to recover. She's supposed to spend that time resting. Needless to say, she doesn't. Naoko spends more time in the training rooms that in her own room and sees more wooden stumps than actual people.

Anger. Desperation. Hatred. It's hard to completely put a name on the emotion raging inside. She settles on frustration.

 _"_ _ _Why?"__

Her chakra stores are empty, but she keeps on going. Her eyes are closed and her fists are clenched at her side as she tries to create mud walls on all sides of her without using any seals.

 _"_ _ _I didn't ask for your help!"__

She was so useless against the Uchiha, simply because her genjutsu was ineffective against their Sharingan and his shuriken skills matched her senbon ones. If she had more jutsu in her repertoire, maybe she could have stopped them. Maybe she could have saved Keisuke.

(Maybe she could have saved Madara.)

 _"_ _ _I don't need you to help me!"__

 _ _Twenty-nine__ , she notes to herself. She used the Mud Wall jutsu twenty-nine times before completely using up all her chakra. That's twelve times more than two months ago. She lies on the ground panting and unable to get up. When Kauri hauls her up and carries the girl to her room, she barely manages to stop crying out in pain.

She releases the clasps of the weights she now wears, and the ground vibrates with the force of thirty kilograms suddenly hitting the floor at once. Her legs ache to the point that she physically can't walk anymore, and she may have torn a ligament, but it's nothing that medical ninjutsu won't fix - unlike the frustation that she feels.

The voice still rings in her mind.

 _"_ _ _Stay away from me.__ "

* * *

Ichiro counts down the days. He only has fifty more to go.

* * *

She is nearly shivering from the cold.

Wearing only a plain shirt and trousers, her body feels strangely light without her armour, and although she can move much more easily, the last time she had felt this vulnerable was long ago on her last spy mission to the Senju compound.

Mihara is dressed in the same, crouched beside her and hidden behind branches, his chakra signature already changed into that of a Senju and she follows and does the same. The strange thing is, she notices, that Mihara doesn't seem to even need chakra to do so. That's the difference in skill between the two.

Naoko has never been on a mission with him before, and although she doesn't exactly trust him, she knows that he could kill her blind with both hands tied. That's exactly why he was sent on this mission with her. With both fighting power and stealth, he was the perfect candidate. They only needed her because she knew the Senju compound inside and out.

"Ready?" she asks quietly. He only smiles in return.

The compound stands before her, although she can't see it. It's almost predictable, she thinks to herself, a small smile dancing on her lips, releasing the seven layers of genjutsu almost effortlessly to see the structure of the compound just ahead.

If she hadn't known about the presence of the genjutsu, she probably wouldn't have been able to stop them, but after the years of this exact routine, she knows what to expect. They are high level genjutsu, she knows, much higher than anything than she can cast, but genjutsu are much easier to sense and dispel than to cast.

She releases Mihara from the genjutsu and forms a seal and covers both of them in the Hiding With Camouflage jutsu until neither are visible to the naked eye. It's a little harder with two people, but she easily keeps the genjutsu up. She is pleased that she can already feel the noticeable increase in her chakra stores already.

The little entrance concealed in the ground is difficult to notice at first. From far away it completely blends into the dirt that the compound stands on, but on closer inspection, she can just about sense a hint of chakra concentrated on a particular section of the ground.

She closes her eyes and draws a symbol and an arrow into the ground before wiping it away, and she doesn't have to be able to see Mihara to know that he is already on his way.

Their steps are completely silent, their motions completely soundless. Naoko stands above the entrance and takes a deep breath, grabbing hold of what she thinks is Mihara's arm before disappearing deep into the ground, pulling him along with her.

They land silently, although Naoko nearly stumbles, and she leads him along, knowing immediately which direction to go in.

Nobody notices them along the way, but it is difficult for Naoko to guide Mihara while they are both invisible. It takes about ten minutes to reach the destination, but it feels like hours. Every time someone walks past them, her heart stops a beat.

"Here," she whispers, barely a sound escaping through her lips, but Mihara gets the message. She releases the genjutsu. Mihara opens the door and she follows through after him. She forms a single tiger seal. "Bringer of Darkness Technique," she mutters, her eyebrows furrowing with concentration as it hit the Clan Head.

She takes out her weapons and his throat is pierced through with the first senbon she uses. She pulls the senbon back out, leaving a puncture in his larynx. Senju Butsuma staggers backwards, trying but failing to make a sound.

He forms a hand seal, and the reason that Naoko remains uninjured is due to Mihara's amazing reaction speed. The man drops dead on the floor, a pool of blood forming around his body.

"That was a bit too easy, don't you think?" she asks.

The body on the ground disappears in a cloud of smoke, and Naoko only just escapes a fatal injury by leaping as far as she can to the side. She concentrates chakra to her fist to cut away the massive branches of wood that her arm is tangled in.

She can't control it at well as Sakura or Tsunade can in the Future-Past, but considering that she has only come up with the idea for a week and a bit, she thinks she's doing pretty darn well.

Butsuma charges after her and she takes out her paralysis powder-covered senbon stash. She can't hit him, but at least he's keeping a distance now.

"Water Style: Water Bullet Technique!" Mihara shouts, shooting bullets from his mouth one after the other while simultaneously dodging attacks. His eyes gleam and he grins cheerfully. "Leave this to me! Let's meet at Point A!"

She hastily nods and starts sprinting as fast as she possibly can. It takes only a few seconds until she is completely surrounded by Senju. "Earth Style: Turning Earth Tearing Palm!" she shouts, only using one hand seal, then casts a wide-area genjutsu during the distraction.

"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" she shouts to block the multiple jutsu coming in her direction, turning in the other direction and running as quickly as she can. "Earth Style: Mud Wall! Earth Style: Mud Wall!" she cries every few seconds, trying to get as much distance between her and the Senju as possible.

The entrance is blocked.

An entire army of Senju stands before her, and she knows that she stands on chance against them. Dodging the attacks from all sides of her, she panics, and her hands race to form the seals of a jutsu - any jutsu - that she knows.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

She feels like she has taken a blow to the head as black creeps into her vision, but she remains standing. She feels disorientated, and although she can't think straight, her body knows what to do. "We need to escape, Baku!" she shouts, and the huge tapir charges through the Senju as if it is treading on nothing more than mere ants.

"I don't take orders from you!" it cries, and she groans.

Parts of the compound have been completely wrecked by the summon, and the Senju stop attacking as they take cover. Naoko doesn't look back as she tries to guide the summon, but the tapir is stubborn and refuses to acknowledge her, instead dumping her on the ground.

"Thanks, you good-for-nothing little shit!" she yells, her head spinning and her body aching. She gets up and continues to run despite her body's protests. "Fuck you, little fucking fucker, you shitty little shit! Just leave me here, why don't you?!"

Her legs are stronger, she notes, however. They take longer to start burning, and the increase in speed is obvious. Her training with weights has clearly worked, because as she runs, she feels like she is flying. It has been worth the pain, because those hours she spent every day are now giving her an extra few minutes to survive.

It takes twenty minutes before she finally stops running.

Her lungs and legs are burning, and she immediately crashes onto the ground before emptying out the contents of her breakfast of protein bars.

Her entire body __hurts.__ This is why she hated using this jutsu, but her body just acted on its own, and truth be told, Baku was in actuality incredibly useful and incredibly talented. The only problem was that he never even bothered to listen to her.

She had attempted to first summon him a few months ago, and although she had succeeded in calling him, she had fainted from the chakra drain at once.

However, hearing about his previous summoner's death, Baku completely refused to listen to her, or even acknowledge her presence. At least he hadn't actively tried to kill her, she thinks bitterly. She rolls on her side and vomits a second time. Where was she supposed to be meeting Mihara again?

She clumsily gets up and looks around. The scenery looks familiar, though she can't remember how or why. She scrambles towards the river and washes out the taste of vomit in her mouth. There is a reflection of a person in the water behind her, and she turns around and smiles stupidly.

"Hey," she says lamely.

* * *

The brooch pinned on the inside of her shirt has three cracks in it. It's fine, she tells herself, cradling it in her hands, because it's not broken yet. Not yet. It's still fine. __She's__ still fine.

* * *

Naoko isn't the sort of person to have nightmares. It's strange, really, because in this sort of world in that sort of era, you would have thought that she'd sleep uneasily after all that she had been through.

It's not that she doesn't care about what has happened, because she does. Her parents' deaths play out in her mind repeatedly, and so do the dreams about Naruto from the Future-Past. She has experienced Isamu and Ichiro hating her many times in her sleep, and she has witnessed her death too many times to count.

It's not that she doesn't care about what has happened, because she does. But Naoko has simply learned to deal with it, because that's what a warrior does - adapt.

She has heard that others use sleeping drugs, but she's far too paranoid to use them. After all, how many times has she seen in crime dramas someone die from an overdose? Her body has naturally learned to cope with this sort of thing, for when she sleeps, there is probably only one day in a year that she experiences a nightmare.

It just so happens that it __has__ to be today of all days.

* * *

She wakes up kicking and screaming, weapons at the ready and chakra already preparing for jutsu. It takes several seconds for her to recognise Hashirama's face and to calm down. Her head had stopped hurting completely and the sun hung low in the sky. Adrenaline coursed through her body.

She doesn't know what she had been dreaming about, but it had been terrifying. Her hands were still shaking, even as she wearily sat down beside Hashirama. She knew that nightmares were nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about, but her face flushed red anyway.

"You're awake," Hashirama noted. "What… What are you doing here? I thought you said that you weren't going to see me ever again - me or Madara."

She ignores the question, instead changing the subject. "You healed me, didn't you? You're the reason that I fell asleep," she accuses. He nods, and she feels vaguely thankful. "Look, Hashirama, I'm so glad that I got to see you, but I really don't have much time at the moment. Where's Madara?"

His face immediately falls, and Naoko understands immediately. "Your father found out," she points out, and although Hashirama doesn't act, she can tell what he is thinking. He is asking her why she knows and how she knows, but she simply smiles a little and doesn't mention it.

His father was probably dead by now.

"You're a spy, aren't you?" Hashirama asked. There is no accusation in his voice, much less anger or sadness. He is simply asking her a question, and she simply answers it.

"I am," she affirms.

There is a lot he doesn't know about her. He never pried and never asked, but right now he wants to find out. She knows all about him and all about Madara, and he knows nothing about her apart from the facade she always puts up. Even now, he can barely acknowledge the fact that Naoko isn't Naoko, because Naoko to him is not the Naoko that is speaking now.

"I'm from the Shimura clan," she tells him offhandedly. His eyes widen a fraction. "It's obvious from your body language what you're thinking. I'm not a spy for nothing, you know," she jokes. "What do you want to know?"

 _ _Everything__ , he wants to say, but he doesn't. There is a part of him wondering that if he really knew all there was, maybe he wouldn't want to be friends with Naoko anymore. There are so many questions that he wants answered. There are so many of them, and yet he can't voice any of them, apart from one.

"How is Madara?" he asks, and his voice cracks in the middle.

There is so much that Naoko wants to say, to tell him. She wants to tell him about how much Madara has changed, about the cold look in his eyes and the pure indifference that he feels now. She wants to tell him about Kazuhito and how it was all her fault, and that Madara __needed__ Hashirama to save him, like Naoko needs Hashirama to save him.

 _ _(She suddenly isn't hungry or thirsty and her body stops hurting completely, and instead feels completely numb. There is a horrible, tight feeling in her stomach that she can't get rid of.)__

She wants to admit her involvement in the current chaos in the Senju clan and this stupid world. She wants time to reverse because she's so ashamed of what she has done, and she wants to finally tell Hashirama what he had always deserved to know, but she doesn't.

When Hashirama asks her the question, at first the only thing that came to mind was her last meeting with Madara. Then it all turned towards herself, because her life was so intertwined with Madara's and Hashirama's that everything she did affected theirs, and because she had done so many wrong and bad things that she regrets.

There's so much she wants to tell him, but she refrains, just like he does with his questions.

"...Not good," she settles on.

Her eyes catch a glint of light, and she reaches out. "You still have this," she breathes, her hands cupping the necklace. It was her birthday present to him.

"Of course," he tells her. "It always gave me a sense of __Nao-chan__ , even though I didn't know it was you when you gave it to me." He takes the necklace and takes it from his neck, holding it up to the light. It glitters in the Sun.

He lifts his wrist, pulling back the sleeve of his shirt. It is a dark turquoise ribbon from years ago - a makeshift bracelet - and she remembers giving this to him as well.

"Now we match - see," he tells her, holding up her plait, tied in another turquoise ribbon. She smiles and almost forgets the situation that she is in. The Sun has already begun to set, but she doesn't want to leave.

"Now the only thing we need is Madara," she jokes, gazing up at the sky.

"Yeah," Hashirama agrees. "We'll save him, no matter how long it takes. I promise," he says determinedly, and she doesn't doubt it for a second. "After all, we're friends, right?" he adds quietly as an afterthought. Naoko grins.

She wonders for a second what he will think when he realises that his father is dead, and her smile falls. "I have to go," she interrupts, getting up onto her feet. "I hope we'll meet again." Hashirama nods and gets up as well. They say their final goodbyes before each making their own way home.

* * *

She suddenly remembers exactly what the nightmare had been about.

She was losing Madara and Hashirama.

* * *

 _ _("Stay away from me.")__


	16. Possibilities

****Chapter 15****

Naoko arrives at the compound in the morning. Mihara had arrived hours before her. "You're back already?" she asked. "How did you…?" He only smiled. It seemed like his hair had gotten a little bit of a trim, but otherwise he looked to be in perfect condition, even after fighting the Clan Head of one of the strongest clans in the world.

"Nao-chan," he started in his typical sing-song voice, his expression friendly but his eyes murderous. "Don't ask questions to people who don't like being questioned. Remember that, ne?"

He suddenly draws closer. "I heard," he whispers, barely noticeable. __Heard what?__ Naoko asks herself. His voice sends shivers up her spine, but she keeps her expression carefully neutral. "Now there's proof for those rumours."

She freezes.

She leaves the pause just a little too long, and although she doesn't show it, she is absolutely terrified of the consequences. With this information she could be put to death or worse. Her life was dependent on his mercy. __How?__ she wonders. __How did he find out?__

"What are you talking about?" she asks with a hint of urgency. "Mihara, tell me."

"Didn't you hear what I just said?" he says in response, his lips still curled into a smile, completely ignoring her. "Don't ask questions to people who don't like being questioned." He turns to leave immediately, his hands in his pockets and his back slumped. Naoko clenches and un-clenches her fists by her side, completely furious.

Her entire body shakes, and her hands slowly inch towards her senbon pack. In a fit of anger, she considers charging at him and beating the living daylights out of him, despite the massive skill gap between the two and the fact that she would lose, and despite the fact that suspicion would be cast upon her and Mihara would have a reason to reveal her secret.

She is so angry, because this isn't just about her. This concerns Madara and Hashirama as well - her __friends__ \- and because she would __never__ let someone like Mihara harm her friends.

Her lips curl into a snarl and her eyes gleam, and she can almost taste the deliciousness of victory of the fucking sleazebag. She can already smell the tang of his blood and she is __itching__ to get her hands around his throat and mash his body into pieces.

"I like you Naoko, or at least I tolerate you - or at least a friend of mine does," his voice interrupts, and she can just imagine that disgusting, smug smile, and her blood-lust increases by a tenfold.

"Nao-chan," he sings.

Her entire body freeze. Her body feels like it is crushing in on itself and she can't move at all anymore from the pressure. She falls to the ground, unable to get back up. __Mercy__ , is all she can plead in her mind, and grits her teeth and closes her eyes, her lungs begging for air but unable to get it.

"You know, Nao-chan, because I'm so __generous,__ I won't tell your secret…" Mihara claims, "But only if you don't tell mine. Well, you don't know what it is, just yet, but trust me - when you do," he says, giving a single sharp laugh, "You will be absolutely __terrified__."

He walks away and the pressure slowly lifts. __Killer intent__ , she realises, her head throbbing again. She has mastered her own usage of it, and yet hers is much weaker than Mihara's. She takes a deep breath and gets up, leaning against the wall as she starts coughing uncontrollably. Her legs are still shaking.

 _ _(The reason that his killer intent is so much stronger is because his killer intent is real.)__

* * *

It has been four months since she last saw Madara and one week since she last met Hashirama. The time passes by incredibly quickly. In those four months, Naoko has completed seven missions and learned two new jutsu, experienced the deaths of four teammates and battled and won against three opponents.

Oh, yes.

She has also been invited to a wedding.

* * *

She lands steadily on both feet, bending her knees to absorb the impact. The entire space before her is smashed in pieces.

Her knuckles are red and raw and slightly bleeding. They hurt, but it's worth it, Naoko thinks, looking at the damage she has been able to cause. She takes a small break to regain her breath. "How was that?" she asks breathlessly.

"Nao-chan! That was awesome!" squeals Kauri. Naoko grins, even as the older girl pulled her into a hug.

"It was much better," Kouta replies, nodding seriously. "You've improved a lot since you first started. It's a good idea, seeing as your taijutsu could be improved upon. Practise is key, however. At the moment I doubt that you would be able to keep your concentration up for long enough to last through an entire taijutsu spar."

She can't heal her own fists, but she wraps them up in bandages to minimise the damage. They are beginning to smoke a little. "What about the Summoning Jutsu? Is there a way to make Baku listen to me?"

He laughs a little. "You'll have to find out yourself."

"I'm definitely getting faster, though, aren't I?" she asks, pulling the weights back on and tying the bandages around her legs as well. Her speed is noticeably decreased and her legs begin to feel numb again.

"Which level are you at now, huh?" Kauri asks curiously.

"I've increased the weights to sixty kilograms now. It's much more difficult than previously, but I'm on par with most of the other clan members now, at least in short distance races," she tells them proudly.

"I'm sure," Kouta agrees, then grins. "But you're not faster than me."

He wasn't being arrogant about his abilities, she knows. After all, it was a well-known fact that Kouta was the fastest in the clan - and that was something, considering that the Hono's slight body build naturally ensured that they had an advantage in terms of speed - probably about the same as Rock Lee in the Future-Past.

"I'm faster than Kenta, though," she points out, pouting. "After all, he stopped wearing weights when he was eleven, but only up to forty-five kilograms."

As they start leaving, she feels her feet heavily slam against the ground with every step. She smiles, but it is strained. It hurts, but she knows that Hono clan members did this sort of training ever since they were seven. She knows that she needs to deal with the pain.

"Make sure you're not straining yourself," Kauri warns.

"Of course not," she replies, perhaps a little too cheerily or a little too quickly.

* * *

"What do you call a potato, Naoko?" the red-haired boy teases slightly, a smirk plastered on his face.

At first she is shocked, but when the words finally sink it, her face flushes deep red.

 _"_ _ _Shut up,"__ she grumbles.

* * *

Naoko gets up at midnight after sleeping for five hours and enters the dungeon. She switches with the last guard, who seems to be half-asleep, and takes the key from him. She watches the boy, though he cannot see her, and his chakra tells her that he is still asleep.

There is no indication of time there, but Naoko can see the effect of being prisoner in such a place for a year. His ghostly pale skin sticks to his bones and his hair is long and matted, like dark straws. He looks like a living and breathing skeleton with one foot in the grave.

He looks like Madara used to, she thinks, though much less impressive and much more vulnerable. Between his eyebrows there is a permanent wrinkle, which reminds Naoko of her permanent scowl (though she has worked very hard to scowl less so and she thinks that it might be working).

She watches the boy with the food and water and bucket come and go, and then continues watching Kazuhito. He is stirring, his eyes gently fluttering open.

 _ _("We'll save him, no matter how long it takes. I promise.")__

She doesn't hesitate for a second. After all, she promised. "Hey," she whispers. There is no response. "Hey, Uchiha-san," she prompts again. This time he notices her voice and looks around slightly.

"Hey," he says, though it is so quiet that it is barely noticeable. His voice is dry and raspy and he shuts his eyes firmly. "I'm not going mad, am I?" he asks pleadingly. "I've never heard voices before. I'm not going mad, right?"

"No," she replies determinedly. "I'm going to get you out of here, Kazuhito-san."

She almost wonders if he had fallen back asleep. The silence is deafening and the pause drags on too long for her to be entirely comfortable. "I'll get you out," she repeats with growing resolution.

 _ _("After all, we're friends, right?"__ echoes in her mind. __Of course__ , she replies to herself. __We're friends, and we're going to save him, no matter how long it takes.)__

"...Are you though?" he asks after a short pause. "Are you?" he spits, voice growing rapidly louder with each word. "You're tricking me! You're going to kill me, aren't you?" he breathes.

"Believe it or not," she hisses, silencing him, "Don't speak of this to anyone apart from me, do you hear? They'll kill both you and me if they know what I'm doing."

Maybe it's just hope, but to be honest, even death sounds better than what he was currently going through. He is desperate and so, so tired. "...How will I know if it's you?" he asks, suddenly sounding incredibly vulnerable.

"I'm the only girl," she settles on, slightly surprised by his willingness to believe her. "And I'll talk to you first."

"...Okay," Kazuhito finally agrees, sounding genuinely grateful. "Thank you… Nee-san."

* * *

Sixteen days left, Ichiro counts. He draws another line with the stub of chalk. There is barely any space left on the dark paper pinned to the wall.

Sixteen more days.

* * *

It's difficult. Wind Style jutsu are much harder than Earth - seeing as they're only her second affinity, but she's trying her best. "Wind Style: Vacuum Wave!" she shouts, and in her mind there is a vague recollection of a boy and his sister in the night, and it makes her smile.

A wind blows gently within the room, no stronger than the ones that occur naturally.

She has a feeling that the jutsu won't get better for a while, and there's nothing she can do about it. She's already pushing herself too hard.

* * *

"When are you giving the signal?" Mihara snaps. His voice has dropped its joking tone and Kenta can barely hear it. All that registers in his mind is that he's being threatened, and his hands automatically clasp onto his weapons. Mihara sighs. "I'm getting impatient, Kenta. Don't keep me waiting."

Kenta scowls and holds his arms up. He __knew__ what he was doing. Mihara was the one that had originally told him to take his time, and now he was trying to take over control again. He never would have gotten as far as he had with the plan if it wasn't for me, Kenta thinks bitterly. It was all because of Kenta's foreknowledge - not that he had ever revealed it.

"Look, I have a plan, alright?" he offered hastily.

"Need I remind you, Naoko is planning to release the Uchiha soon. We only have a few days left," Mihara cautions, his voice cutting through like a knife. "If all of our work is ruined because you didn't take action quick enough, Kenta, I swear I will __murder__ you."

He doesn't doubt it at all. The boy is absolutely ruthless - his best trait but also his worst. "Then let's just kill the Uchiha when she releases him," Kenta reasons.

"You're still planning to keep __her__ alive, then?" Mihara asks, daintily raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," he replies firmly. "Keep her alive. Don't kill Naoko."

The older boy makes a sort of noise from the back of his throat, signaling his displeasure. "What sort of attachment do you have to the girl?" Mihara orders, deathly quiet. "From what I've seen, you absolutely loathe her! Besides, she's a traitor to the clan. I've seen better among the trash. She's hardly worth keeping alive, is she?"

Kenta didn't dare object, but he certainly wanted to. His hands shook and he gritted his teeth, staring intently at the other boy.

Truth be told, he didn't know either. He didn't know why he couldn't kill her, or even entertain the thought of letting her die. He had already let her down once, and he didn't want to this time, and yet she didn't even remember who he was.

"You tagged her?" he asks quietly. "What's been happening now?"

Mihara's lips curve into a bitter smile. "I daresay you've heard about her… __condition__ , Kenta?" His eyes widen. "It's been getting worse. That medic - the woman - says that she doesn't have long to live. But you probably knew that already, right?"

"Her lungs have been defective again?" he blurted disbelievingly. "No… I thought it was gone this time. When did it start, Mihara?"

"Probably a year ago or so," he replies smugly. "Are you still sure about your decision to keep her alive, Kenta? She'll probably die anyway."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm sure," he stressed. "Don't harm her."

* * *

Madara's eyes are dim, Izuna notes to himself. They've been dim for months, ever since the meeting between him and that Senju boy, and even dimmer after that mission where everyone else died, where he faced two squads of Hono shinobi.

"Do you think Kazuhito's still out there?" he prompts, though it has been used so many times that the question has lost all meaning by now.

"It's been a year and a half," Madara replies monotonously, not bothering to turn his head.

He searches for something to say - anything that will fill the silence in the air. At this point, Izuna is tired and weary and to be honest, he's scared. He doesn't know what has happened to his little brother, but he has lost nearly all hope - all apart from that feeling in his bones, that runs through his blood and veins.

"They've certainly been waiting for a long time," he mutters to himself. "Surely the Aoi clan - or maybe the Hono or Shimura, since they're allied - should have done something by now? But he's still alive… I can feel it."

His brother doesn't reply, but Izuna wonders if it is a trick of the light when his brother's eyes seem to brighten a little.

When an older and wiser and more experienced Izuna is facing his death, he will look back at the past and in particular on this period of time, and the older and wiser and more experienced Izuna will realise what a crucial moment this was.

If only he had pushed his brother's buttons a little harder, the older Izuna will later think, everything could have been changed.

When Izuna remembers this moment, he'll realise that this moment was the starting point of Madara's breaking point. This was the moment that a ray of hope had appeared before the older Uchiha, and the moment that both of them realised that the only thing in the world stronger than fear is hope.

And, he'll later think to himself, it was all because of a fateful meeting between a girl and two boys.

* * *

 _ _One more day__ , Ichiro thinks to himself.

* * *

Naoko's limbs are sore and stiff from sleeping in the carriage for so long. Beside her Kouta and Mihara sit, along with the many gifts they had brought. As the Clan Heads of each clan hadn't been able to come - as this would leave the clans in danger - Kouta and Mihara had been elected to stand in their places.

Naoko, on the other hand, was family. Her head pounded as she woke up. The carriage continually bounced as it hobbled along the dirt path. Outside the carriage were ten shinobi guarding it, though Naoko was barely able to sense them.

"We're here," Kouta told her as the carriage pulled to a stop, and boy, did her heart stop. The buildings all looked a little different, no doubt from remodels and repairs, and so did the people in it, but she couldn't stop herself from running towards the compound as the exited the carriage.

"Naoko-hime!" the people shouted, and she couldn't help but cry out in glee. "Did you get your birthday gift? Did you like it?" the children clamoured, and her face split into a grin.

"Jirou-kun!" she cried, seeing one particular boy with a flower in his hand. He handed it to her.

"Hope you haven't forgotten me, have you?" he teased.

"Of course not," she replied. Warmth bubbled in her heart as she greeted the others, Mihara and Kouta forgotten. "Nii-sama!" she calls out and runs up to Isamu, who is so much taller and stronger than she last remembers. She missed this place so much, and she hasn't quite forgotten how it felt to have to leave.

 _ _Home__ , she thinks. She's home.

* * *

The wedding is held in the Main Hall, and although only a few prominent people are invited to the wedding itself - no more than thirty or forty, Naoko counts - everyone joins in on the party afterwards. The day is merry and the Sun is golden and beaming, the sky clear and the blooming flowers seeming to dance along with the people in the gentle breeze.

She couldn't have wished for a better day for her brother and his fiance.

The Main Hall is adorned with silk banners and the tables garnished with pale yellow and white flowers in vases, laid out among the cutlery. Everyone is dressed in their best, and the hall bursts into music as the orchestra starts to play.

Ichiro walks in, accompanied by one of the Clan Elders, looking visibly nervous but remaining steady as he was expected to. His usually gaunt appearance had changed - Naoko notices - and his face is split in half with a grin.

He pauses, watching as Kaya also walks in. Naoko smiles as she sees his breath hitch for a second, and she doesn't blame him. Kaya looks stunning. There is no way to describe it, Naoko thinks, without somehow demoting her image, so she doesn't. She simply watches as the two make their vows and the hall bursts into applause.

"They look good, right?" Isamu whispers to her.

"Right," she agrees, dipping her head slightly. "They do."

* * *

"They have declared war," Hashirama says, sombre, watching the shocked and desperate and scared faces of his people. He cannot help it. "The war will commence in a week."

* * *

She visits the graves that she hasn't seen in years. She holds the flowers in her hands.

Maybe she'll see her parents again soon, she thinks idly. There is a sense of dread creeping up her spine, and she welcomes it. She doesn't bother to struggle or to fight it.

She remembers the feeling. It's the feeling of death.

* * *

"You know how much I miss you, right?" Isamu asks, his famously handsome face streaked with tears. "I know that you're strong and that you can protect yourself, Nao-chan, but I couldn't help but worry."

"It's alright," she says gently. She has been here for just long enough to see the wedding procession from start to finish, but has been allowed no more time than that. It's almost cruel, she thinks, reminding her of what she has always longed for before snatching it away, her home within sight but never within reach.

"Be safe out there," Ichiro warns, before his stern facade breaks and he hugs her tightly. "You're leaving again so soon," he whispers, and she smiles. She hands them the scroll she kept in her pouch, the scroll with velvet and moss green binding.

"Even when I've left, I won't be gone," she tells them, and they know it in their hearts and smile. "It's a Summoning Scroll. I know that you already have your own Summons, but I'm not really able to use Baku to his full potential, and I know that you could. Please accept it."

Ichiro graciously takes it from her hands and stores it in his own bag. He smiles gently.

"We'll miss you," Isamu blurts out again. "Come back soon, Nao-chan, please, right? We miss you already and you're not even gone. Come back safe and sound, right?"

"I know," she replies softly.

"Everyone will miss you," Ichiro adds. "When you left the compound, it just wasn't the same, and everyone could tell. The children were crying without even knowing why, and the joy in the compound diminished so much. It was because you were gone, Nao-chan."

She feels strangely close to crying.

"You… You look beautiful, right?" says Isamu quietly, repeating the words from years ago.

"Thank you," she replies, a faint smile dancing on her lips.

"I wish you didn't have to do this," Ichiro tells her. "But you… I know you're smart and responsible, and I…" He trails off at the end, his face scrunching up.

Isamu was always the handsome one out of the three of them - the one with the charisma. He was the boy with the natural radiance that drew people to him like moths to a flame. People would throw away their lives for someone like him.

He was the one that girls wanted to be with and boys wanted to be. He was the one that the people love as their friend, and he was the boy with the grin that taught her jutsu and told her he would always protect her. He was the boy that wormed his way into Naoko's cold and guarded heart.

Even after all the years, that has not changed, and she doubts it ever will.

Ichiro was always the responsible one who was destined to take over from their father and lead the clan to victory and peace. He was the one that had made a name for himself in the war at the age of only 14, had wiped out clans with his ruthless tactics and deadly precision, who had most certainly _ _deserved__ to become the next Clan Head.

She knows him as the boy that once sung his little sister a lullaby to sleep, and the one that locked himself away in his room for days on end, only to have mastered a new technique or come up with an idea for a fighting tactic, and the one that cried for days after she had gone.

He was the pride of the Shimura Clan Head - the boy, no, the __man__ \- that everyone looked up to and wanted to be like. And his right hand man would be his brother, the 'glue,' the person that would keep the clan together.

And Naoko?

She was the girl who had sacrificed everything for the clan and her family and friends, and she was the one who had enough knowledge about the world that they lived in to make a difference, and she was determined to do so.

She wasn't Ichiro, who had earned the respect of all, and she certainly wasn't Isamu, who was beloved by all within the clan, but she didn't mind so much as she used to think she did.

She loved the people in her life, and that was enough for her.

Naoko smiles again. "I understand." And she does understand. She understands it all. The carriage comes to a halt, and she quickly hugs the two of them and never wants to let go, but she knows she must.

"Be safe while I'm gone, okay?" she whispers as she releases them and by then she already knows that her face is wet, but she doesn't wipe it away. She doesn't mind it so much, because it's a sign of her love for them.

"You too," Isamu says, smiling a bittersweet smile. She puts on a smile once again - though this time they can all tell that it is a rare but real smile, and, Ichiro thinks, that seeing one of these smiles on his little sister is worth all the suffering in the world.

Mihara and Kenta climb call out for her to hurry up, but she doesn't want to rush her goodbyes. Somewhere, deep in her heart, she knows that this is going to be their last meeting.

"What are you going to call the baby?" she asks gently.

* * *

She doesn't know what to do.

On one hand, she has to save Kazuhito in order to help Madara. On the other, she'll be betraying the clan, Ichiro, Isamu, and Pip, and that's the last thing she wants to do.

She knows that it's her responsibility to save the world. She came into the world with this knowledge in order to save the world, and in order to do that, she needs to stop Madara, and that's the reason that she put her life in risk at the age of three, when she decided to learn to fight in a world where the odds are stacked against her. That's the reason she did all this, she reminds herself, but it leaves her feeling only hollow inside.

She wasted her entire life for this, and it's her __duty__.

She also knows that it's her responsibility, as a sister and a friend, to not act. To destroy all of her ties in order to save one boy - and in saving that one boy, saving the world, is an unreasonable request. It wasn't her world to begin with, and it isn't her problem.

She grits her teeth and pounds the wooden blocks tirelessly, tears mixing with sweat and blood. She is so torn inside, because she knows that no matter what she does, she'll hate herself for it.

 _"_ _ _Nao-chan! We'll be late to dinner!"__ Kauri calls out happily, and the only thing that Naoko thinks is, __why me?__

She hates the carefree attitude that the older girl has, and for a second, wants to scream and tear the ginger to pieces, because it's __not fair.__

It reminds her of the times when she was barely two weeks old and already hating her life and hating herself. It reminds her of that time when Naoko was two and had screamed profanities at the compound that she had hated and now loves. It reminds her of that horrible, unquenchable feeling inside that won't __go.__

"Coming!" she calls out in reply, but she doesn't move, allowing the tears to flow freely.

* * *

"Hey, are you okay?" the red-haired boy asks offhandedly, two weeks later. "You're acting odd, you potato."

She scowls at him, before burying her face deep in her hands.

It's times like these where she wishes that she doesn't have to betray him. It's times like these where she thinks about the possibilities of the future, if she changed her mind. It's times like these that she thinks that her relationship with her lost friend might be repaired, even though she knows in her heart that she has already made up her mind.

It breaks her heart to know that this might be the last time she ever sees him again. She looks at his raised eyebrow, and burns his face into her memory, and smiles sadly.

"I'm fine, Kenta-san," she replies.

"...Right." He raises an eyebrow but doesn't probe any further, and she chews on her lip nervously.

* * *

It is in that week that Naoko decides that she is going to carry out her plan. She enters the dungeons again, the heavy rope and key slung around her neck, and waits until the bucket boy enters and exits, and until Kazuhito has finished all of his food. She sneaks him two protein bars, a bottle of water and a pouch of shuriken.

"Ready?" she asks.

"Ready," he returns.

* * *

 **This is a little bit of a filler chapter, but next chapter is full of action (I think)!**

 **Is there anything that you'd like to see later or find a bit off-putting in this chapter? PM or tell me in the reviews! I'd love to hear your opinion. Also, _IF YOU HAVE ANY TIPS FOR FIGHT SCENES PLEASE TELL ME!_**

 **Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed or favourite, and I forgot to mention it but this story got 100 follows a little while ago - which I am eternally grateful for.**


	17. War

Chapter ** **16****

"What's happening?" Hashirama asks. "Why is the clan compiling their weapon stores? Why won't anybody tell me about anything anymore?"

"You don't need to know," his father replies immediately, his eyes blank as they always have been for the past few weeks. A bout of anger makes Hashirama curl his lips into a snarl, though it quickly dissipates. "Prepare for war, though, Hashirama. I will tell you that."

Hashirama isn't sure what he feels. It's a feeling that makes his stomach churn and his hands shake. "Why? Against who?" he asks, increasingly desperately.

"You don't need to know!" his father snaps.

Hashirama flinches. He quickly leaves the room, his mind whirring. The higher-ups aren't acting like themselves. The clan isn't being managed properly.

He's scared.

* * *

They creep silently through the dungeon. He rips away the chakra suppression seal, finally able to feel his arms and legs and the quiet thrum of adrenaline through his veins again. He has not used chakra in two years.

He is gasping for clean air - air that has not been tainted with his sweat and blood and tears - and he can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Only a little bit further, he tells himself, but his legs are aching and his lungs are burning from just walking the few metres.

He tails the older girl silently. She seems to know all the ways to escape without being seen, and she walks soundlessly and effortlessly like an experienced cat. He doesn't speak, because even after two years of confinement he is not reckless enough to give away such an indication of their being there.

The girl - though he doesn't know her name and he doesn't know why she has black hair and not red like the others - suddenly halts. Kazuhito tilts his head confusedly.

"Nee-san, what -?"

He flies back and he crashes into the wall without even seeing what had hit him except a white blur, and he only knows that __it's not Nee-san__. The wind is knocked out of him and he slumps against the floor, unable to get up. His Sharingan deactivates and his eyes close.

The world disappears.

* * *

Naoko stares at the empty cell.

She turns back and runs. She runs through the dungeons and scrambles around the compound trying to find the boy. __It's Mihara__ , she knows. She knows it and nothing can dissuade her.

 _ _("I heard," he whispers, barely noticeable.)__

By now it doesn't matter why or how or anything at all, apart from the fact that Kazuhito has disappeared and that she needs to get him back.

She expands her chakra sense to as far as possible within the compound, and she easily notices the purposefully flared chakra of Mihara. He's mocking her, she knows, but she runs in that direction and slams through the door, a snarl on her face, though she is invisible to everyone else. She releases the genjutsu, panting heavily.

Kazuhito is on the floor, unconscious. There is a pool of blood around his body and the hilt of a sword poking out through his stomach.

His eyes are already beginning to dull, and she cannot stop it, no matter how much she tries to use her medical ninjutsu. It isn't working for some reason, but she won't stop trying.

"You can't heal someone once they're already dead," a voice says from behind.

"...I know," she replies softly.

She stands, frozen, unable to move.

"Ten seconds earlier and he might have made it alive. You're getting slow, Nao-chan!" Mihara taunts, a smile on his face that is a little too wide to seem convincing. Blood stains the edge of one of his sleeves.

"What… How did you…?" she gasps, bewildered, looking back and forth between Mihara and Pip, who stands nonchalantly besides the Aoi.

" _ _Nao-chan__ ," he starts, his voice suddenly turning a one-eighty from humorous to murderous. "I thought I already told you. Don't ask questions to people who don't like being questioned." He waves his hand and Kenta purses his lips before walking towards her.

Her hands inch slowly towards her pouch of senbon, though she only then realises that they are missing. She frantically searches for them before her eyes rest on Mihara. She wonders why she had never noticed him taking them, before realising that she doesn't care. She's going to die.

Her hands are shaking.

"You said that I'd know your secret," she bites. "Well __I don't__."

"You will soon enough," Kenta replies curtly. It might just be her imagination - maybe she was just tired or hopeful - but his hands seem to shake slightly as he draws out his blade from its sheath. He takes it in his hands and lets out a long breath, his eyes dull as he swings it with deadly precision.

"What are you doing?" she hisses desperately, frantically lashing out to avoid his blows. She can't control her body - it is moving by itself, refusing to go on the offensive. She is slowly being pushed backwards.

He pins her against the wall, the back of his arm crushing her neck, and the air is squeezed out of her lungs. She chokes for air but can't get it. Her lungs are burning.

She doesn't retaliate back. Her body hangs limp and her eyes pop out, veins bursting. She doesn't want to die, she knows, but she'd rather die than lash out. She is tired and the eternal sleep suddenly seems so, so welcoming and calm.

 _ _What a horrible way to die__ , she notes. __Useless. I'm useless.__

* * *

Kazuhito, in his last moments, wearily lulls himself to sleep.

He sees only the red of his blood and rage, and he can feel the life slowly draining from his body. He can taste the blood in his mouth and he can't breathe through his nose.

He can hear his blood slowly leaking from his body, dripping on the floor like water from a slightly open tap. He can feel the cold of the hard, stone floor and the silver blade against his hot body, and his throbbing pulse at the back of his pounding head. He closes his eyes and deactivates his Sharingan, and he stops taking breaths.

He would feel betrayed and angry, he knows, under any other circumstance, but at the moment the only thing he wants is to sleep.

A flash of white appears.

* * *

When she wakes up, Naoko is lying on the floor, and she opens her eyes to see the bloodied, empty eyes of Kazuhito Uchiha. It must have been hours, she realises, noticing her bruised arms and neck. It takes all of her energy to cling to consciousness, but her head slowly stops pounding as she lifts a glowing hand to her injured limbs.

She takes one look at Kazuhito's dead body and hurls.

She's not dead, she knows. Death felt different.

She doesn't understand how or why she is alive, but she somehow is. She follows her instinct, and she trusts it. She trusts her instincts to lead her towards Pip.

Her head spins dizzily but she continues running.

It's like the tale of Hansel and Gretel, really, except with little smears of chakra everywhere rather than breadcrumbs, some more recent than others.

She doesn't know that she's following them, but her body has taken to it like second nature. Maybe it's because she's been following Pip for years; ever since they died, or ever since they became friends. Maybe even before that.

* * *

"H2492LP, currently known as Uchiha Kazuhito, in World 10993 needs to be picked up," someone drawls out.

"Got it!" another - a Reaper, this time - shouts.

"Shh…" I whisper. I am just over fifteen thousand years old now, one of the less experienced, although older, Watchers. "I don't want to make another mistake with my Spirit." I turn back to the world and dip my nose into A5N009Q's - my Spirit's - perspective again.

* * *

With every footstep, he leaves a mark.

He doesn't know why he does it, but he leaves behind a smear every time, just a bit, for her to follow him by. He knows that Mihara has noticed and is simply turning a blind eye, but he grabs the opportunity.

They don't have much time. He has already given the signal, and they only have around two hours before the attack starts. He wonders if Naoko will have woken up by then. He wonders why he wants the attack to stop. After all, it was his idea in the first place.

With every footstep, he leaves her a trail.

 _ _(He doesn't know he's leading her to her death.)__

* * *

She arrives at the battlefield. By then it is already a bloodied and rotting field of mangled corpses and blades. She can smell the odour of despair, can feel the atmosphere terror and hear the wails and screams of children and adults, men and women, and the burning of flesh, the slush of mud and water, and the roar of jutsu clashing.

She is exhausted already, but nobody notices her. She doesn't really know why.

 _ _Am I too late?__ she wonders.

She looks around. It seems like it is the world against her. On either side of her are her friends __(the people her brothers would call their enemies)__ , all butchering each other in a glorified slaughterhouse, and it feels like she's invisible to the world around her.

She wants to tell them to stop fighting, but deep inside, knows that it's useless. There's no point anymore. A blade zooms past her, dangerously close to chopping off her nose, but she doesn't move.

Someone nearby - a black haired Uchiha, seven years old with a two-tomoe Sharingan in each eye - falls to the ground. Buried in his stomach is a hole, three inches deep, one inch wide. He is dead or dying, and although she wants to help, she knows that it's pointless.

This is why she became a medic, she thinks. She became a medic to save people. It's disappointing just how useless the skill is, especially in the times that it is needed the most.

She is so confused as to what is happening and why, as to what started this sudden war and how, but she doesn't question it. Life is strange, and it is cruel. She just has to accept it if she wants to survive.

Her eyes blur and focus all at once, and immediately she notices three things at once.

The first thing she sees is Kenta - or rather, she finds his familiar chakra signature among the crowd - out of the brunt of the fight, and she is glad that he, at least, is not in danger. The second thing she notices are Madara and Hashirama. They are somewhere nearby, their weapons clashing as they charge at each other.

The last thing she notices is the sword.

It is flying towards her, fast and deadly as a bullet.

She barely manages to avoid it. She stands up and faces the direction that the weapon had shot from. Her eyes focus on the white-blond-haired boy, his sharp glare piercing through her soul.

He isn't joking around anymore.

He flies at her, and fueled by adrenaline and hatred, Naoko reacts in time to start her genjutsu. This time she makes herself invisible and vanishes. It isn't one of her normal battle tactics. She doesn't need to fight this time.

He is a master of disguise; she knows that. But so is she. He is a master of disguise, but she is the one who has spent twelve years of borrowed time in another world. She is the chosen one, she thinks, because this couldn't have been a coincidence for her to have retained her memories after all this time.

Naoko runs, her feet silently hitting against the ground, and she suppresses her chakra so much that it hurts, but at least even she can't notice it anymore. She boosts her speed with chakra and the wind cuts at her skin as she runs so quickly that everything is now just a blur.

She sees Izuna and Tobirama fighting against each other, neither willing to relent. They charge at each other with their swords drawn, neither of them noticing her, and in a flash, she hurls them both down to the ground.

Tobirama's eyes flash for a second in recognition when he sees her.

"Shimura Naoko," she replies, knowing what he wants to say before he does. "Butsuma Senju is dead and half of both your clans' forces have been wiped out. Look! At this rate nobody will survive," she urges them both. "That's why you need to listen to me. Take your forces and run. Stop the fighting by any means necessary."

She leaves. She looks back up again, and her eyes immediately are drawn to one place.

She is only aware of the Uchiha and Senju that she had once made friends with as a gamble against the world, and that's where she goes.

* * *

 _ _(White. That's all Kazuhito can describe it as.)__

* * *

"My name is Hono Kenta. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," the boy drones. Zetsu knows that he has hit the jackpot this time. The boy's chakra is tainted - just barely, but he can sense it - and it is the same tint that Kaguya once had.

"Aoi Mihara," he replies, grinning.

There are a million billion gazillion different possible factors that affect what happens in a universe - the individuals, the timings, the actions. Kenta was just one of these factors, Zetsu thinks, and yet, looking back, must have affected millions of factors of the future.

"We'll get rid of the Uchiha," the boy says, at only ten years of age. Zetsu, at ten thousand, doesn't reply, and only smiles. The boy is naive, and that fact is only accentuated by his age. The boy doesn't know anything about the world, but, Zetsu has to admit, he has some pretty good ideas.

"We'll plot the Uchiha against the Senju in a war that they won't be able to win. It'll be an Uchiha massacre," the boy says. There is a glint in his eyes that Zetsu likes. "We'll make the world a better place, and we'll create a future of peace. Help me to achieve my goal."

"I'm intrigued," he admits. "Tell me more about this plan of yours." It's a goldmine, he knows, of ideas. The boy is naive, and that makes it easy to manipulate him. Zetsu knows that he'll be able to achieve his goal this time. He'll be able to revive Mother.

The boy smirks. "I'll give you the signal."

* * *

"Hashirama! Madara!" she screams, releasing the genjutsu, and the world goes silent around her, although the wails and terror and crashes are still roaring in the background.

 _"_ _ _Nao-!"__

She looks at the pair. The world is still. Hashirama and Madara have stopped fighting, at least temporarily, and they are the only three people in it. They have all the time in the world, even if they don't.

"No! STOP!" Hashirama screams at her, but she doesn't.

He doesn't think. He runs forward with a burst of speed, and shoves Naoko to the side. She hits the ground like a rag doll, but it's not nearly as bad as the pain he's feeling.

The shuriken hits with a thunk and a squelch in his side, and only then does Naoko understand what has happened. Blood seeps through Hashirama's side and he chokes red up, staring fearfully at Madara's outstretched arm. His eyes are cold.

He pulls out the shuriken from his flesh, his eyes squeezed out as he lets out a cry of pain, and lifts his hands towards the wound. Sweat trickles down his forehead as the wound slowly begins to heal.

"Run!" Hashirama urges, wheezing and struggling to keep breathing, but she remains frozen.

"... _ _Hashirama?__ " she asks wearily. She only comes to her senses as she feels the coolness of the blade pressing against the back of her neck, and she doesn't dare to move.

At this point in time, she is only twenty-five in total, though she is already tired of life. It's a wasted life, and there's no point in it anymore. She's tired and she's bored, and she doesn't care anymore. That's the only possible explanation for her sudden boldness, because she definitely wouldn't have done something like this at any other time.

A sudden wave of anger rushes over her.

 _"_ _ _Dumbass!"__ she cries, gritting her teeth, and turns to the Uchiha. "What did you -? Why? __Madara?!__ "

He doesn't reply.

She is furious. She can't explain why - she doesn't know it herself - but she is. She's so angry that she can't contain it anymore, and her face twists into a snarl. She stares into his cold, detached eyes with determination, both refusing to look away first. He's a stubborn idiot, Naoko knows, but she's even more so. It's the very reason that a carefree child like Alice managed to survive in a world like this one.

She walks backwards, pressing her neck further into the blade. She can feel the layers of skin cutting, and the blood beginning to trickle down her neck, but she doesn't care. She charges her fist up with chakra - enough to destroy a mountain - and swings it fiercely at him.

It's fast.

It swings with such speed that even Madara isn't able to react in time. She herself struggles to keep her feet stationed on the ground and hits him with the entire force of her body weight. She staggers slightly as her arm starts to smoke.

She's so much faster than he remembers, and he struggles to keep up.

As the blow connects with his jaw, he flies backwards. His body crashes roughly against the ground. He spits out blood - and a tooth - but stands back up steadily, only the slightest amount of hesitation evident in his actions.

His eyes burn.

She charges towards him. They trade blows, and with every hit she takes, Naoko's resolve grows stronger and her rage becomes more intense.

"Remember that day, Madara? You asked me why I healed you - why I didn't kill you like I should have, Madara!" she screams at him.

She blocks his punch and only slightly slows down as his foot crashes into her back, instead using it as an opportunity to pull on his hair. He tries to get away, but she holds on tight. She won't let go. She lands a blow on his stomach, winding him temporarily. He strikes her against the face. She tumbles backwards and dizzily stands up.

"You asked me why, and I didn't reply. I was too scared and too tired, but now I've finally got the answers! I've replayed that day over and over and __over__ in my mind, Madara."

She moves to elbow him. He twists her arm behind her back, and she screams in pain and defiance. She kicks and flails. He shoves her to the ground. He makes a fist and flings it towards her but before it hits, she bites his arm and doesn't let go. He headbutts her. She spits on his face. He doesn't hesitate.

"You told me to stay away from you!" she screams. "When you said that, Madara, I couldn't __live__ anymore. You told me to stay away, but I can't! You know why?"

She breathes raggedly and finally lets out a sob. She pins him against the ground, hands scraping against his scalp and hair to keep him still, and she finally stops attacking. Madara lets out a roar and flips her to the ground.

"I tried to save Kazuhito for you! I tried to help him escape!" she cries. "He's dead, now, Madara, and it's all my fault! I tried and I failed, and because of that, I've lost an entire clan. You may have lost a sibling, but I've lost my entire family. __I went against my clan's direct orders for you__ , Madara _ _, and do you know why?!__ "

She ends up once again with the cold silver pressed against her neck, but she doesn't stop struggling - she __can't__ stop struggling - because she doesn't know __how__.

"You wanna know why I won't stop?" she roars, and charges her first with chakra again. She swings it violently at the Uchiha, but he doesn't let go of her. " _ _Madara__!" she screams, and he blocks with his arm. He is blown back ten metres, but charges back towards her without hesitation.

He moves too quickly for her to react, and she crashes into the rocks behind her, scrambling back up. She slams into the ground and it shatters like shrapnel.

She slams his head onto the ground, and he flips her backwards, both of them crashing into the floor once again. They both haul themselves up. She sees red and runs towards him, and him her, both with their fists outstretched, and neither of them are holding back.

They are simply blurs to the rest of the world.

"We're __friends__ ," Hashirama reminds, and he stands between the two. Her eyes widen. She pulls back the chakra in her fist just in time, although it sends harsh prickles up her arm, and digs her heels into the ground.

Nevertheless, the force from the two blows makes him fall to the ground on his knees. She crouches down beside him and starts pumping chakra to her hands. "I'm so sorry," she whispers, like a mantra. She feels the metal blade against her neck again, but doesn't stop.

"Friends, eh?" she whispers quietly, as Hashirama begins to sit up. "Madara, please. __Please.__ "

She feels the blade shake against her neck slightly before it is released, and lets out a long breath that she didn't know she was holding. She realises that tears are streaming down her cheeks. Hashirama chokes for a second before also letting out a sob, and Madara tries to contain his tears but fails.

"I forgive you," Madara replies, and gives a shaky smile. "Kazuhito, in his last moments… at least had a… a friend with him. Thank you." An image of a young boy flashes briefly in her mind, body sprawled on the ground with red staining the ground around him.

"I'm sorry, Madara," Hashirama whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

They're all crying, but it is the happiest moment of her life.

"Please come home, Madara. Stop fighting us."

 _ _("We'll save him, no matter how long it takes. I promise," he says determinedly, and she doesn't doubt it for a second. "After all, we're friends, right?" he adds quietly as an afterthought. Naoko grins.)__

It is a peaceful moment, she thinks, and she is grateful for it.

 _ _(She blames herself for what happens next.)__

* * *

 **Wow! Boy, was this a pain to write! I hope you enjoyed the ending.**

 **Any thoughts on the fight scenes?**

 **Thank you for those reviews last chapter - they were so lovely!** **I've just been playing lacrosse for a few hours (we won Counties - yay!) and am exhausted, and my feet hurt, but please review/favourite/follow!**


	18. The Price

****Chapter 17****

She lets herself be hit by the genjutsu. Everything is black before he appears. She welcomes him, although she knows very well that she's supposed to hate him.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asks.

"Genjutsu, though you undoubtedly already knew that," he explains casually.

"You know that's not what I mean," she warns.

He chuckles. "Well, I promised that you'd know my secret by now, so I'll tell you," he says, almost gently, "but I will warn you; there is a price. There's always a price."

"I trust you," she says, and she sits down opposite him.

"That's so untrue it's not even funny," he replies, and she smirks.

They sit together, and he tells her his story.

* * *

A5N009R's Passing was an accident. I admit, that was my fault. His own Watcher had to go to his friend's graduation ceremony, and so I took it upon myself to watch both my own A5N009Q, and his A5N0034, for the time being anyway.

Now, you see, I was new. I had only been brought into the process of Watching for thirteen years, graduated bottom of the class, and I had never processed a Passing before. I only became a Watcher when my Spirit was born.

So once A5N009Q's Passing had finally come, I admit I panicked, seeing the flashing lights. I pressed the green button first and then the red one, instead of the other way around, and then accidentally hit the red button of A5N0034 in my panic.

That is how this situation came to be - why the two Spirits retain their memories, that is. Maybe though, I wonder, perhaps it was a good thing.

 _ _(I still probably could have done without A5N0034's Watcher attempting to throttle me though.)__

* * *

"You remember what I told you before, don't you?" Mihara asks. "Don't ask questions to people who don't like being questioned." She nods, understanding the implications of his words. "I'll start from the beginning," he tells her, and she nods again.

 _"_ _ _I am not who you think I am."__

His skin seems to melt from pale cream to pure white, and the strands of his white-blonde hair slowly seem to shrink in on themselves, transforming into a deep, moss green. His sharp eyes turn into yellow half-moons, and his smile turns wider. His entire being is unnatural, but Naoko doesn't dare to question it.

"My true form," he says calmly.

Slowly a black, liquid __(she thinks, she can't tell)__ mass drifts towards them, also with two yellow circles for eyes, climbing up the body of White Zetsu. "Black Zetsu," she realises. "Kaguya's spawn."

And then she finally understands how things came to be; how Mihara managed to defeat Butsuma Senju with barely a scratch; of Mihara's ability to change chakra signature and appearance without the usage of chakra - seeing as even the Aoi clan needed chakra to do so - and of how Mihara had known all about things he couldn't have known about.

He is the one who once immoblised five Kage in the Future-Past, and the one who convinces Madara - her friend - and Obito and everyone else to try and destroy the world. He is the one who caused all that devastation, caused Minato and Kushina's deaths, and so much more.

He is the son of Otsutsuki Kaguya, and he is sneaky and manipulative and vile. She doesn't know how she can stop him, but she refuses to lose hope.

And then suddenly she understands everything else.

"In that mission, you didn't really kill Butsuma, did you?" she asks, though she knows the answer to it already. "No, you took over his body and abused his authority and power by plotting the Senju against the Uchiha in a war that would include the entirety of the clan."

She recalls Pip's hatred for the Uchiha, and laughs bitterly. "You'd make this an Uchiha massacre, just like Pip wanted. You pretended to help him with his plan, when in actuality, you were using him to help yours. You turned his idea into an obsession, and when he finally realised what you had done, you'd kill him."

She knows that she should keep her mouth shut, but she can't. She wants to make Zetsu pay for what he has done - both to her and everyone else - even if she knows it's implausible.

"Though instead of killing off all the Uchiha like he had wanted, you'd keep one Uchiha alive - Madara, the young and powerful Clan Heir, who you'd let slowly harbour his hatred until he finally cracked, and then you'd manipulate him and use him revive Kaguya, isn't that right?"

She mirrors his smile. "You told me I'd be scared, Zetsu," she whispers. "But I'm not scared at all. After all, you're just a pathetic crybaby who depends too much on his mother."

"Oh?" Zetsu asks, though it is less amused and now more threatening. "And how did you come to know such things?"

"I'm not you who think I am either," she replies with a smirk. She slowly pieces the rest of the parts together, and it finally dawns on her. He's going to kill her.

* * *

"...What?" Hashirama asks numbly, as her body suddenly crumples in on itself. It falls to the ground and he shakes her, but __she won't wake up.__ "What did you do to her?"

"It's not me. It's genjutsu," Madara hisses, his red eyes blazing. He crouches down in order to break her out of it, but suddenly snaps to the side, snarling, and in his hands suddenly appear shuriken.

"Shuriken Jutsu!" he calls, and the white-haired boy __( - how did they not sense him? - )__ dodges them all expertly in the air __( - who is he and what did he do to her? - )__ , landing neatly on the ground.

Hashirama's hands whip through the seals in an instant. He slams them on the ground as the ground suddenly creaks. "Wood Style: Wood Dragon Jutsu!" It doesn't hit, however, even as it twists and turns through the air, and Hashirama is forced to abandon it as his chakra begins to drain.

"Take Nao-chan!" Madara calls, but Hashirama has already scooped the girl into his arms and stepped away from the fight.

Within an instant, Madara, who had been standing beside him, lets out a roar and charges at the white-haired boy, his hands only visible as blurs as they spin through the seals. Before the attack hits, however, the Uchiha is knocked out of the air. Hashirama lifts his arms in a cross to block the debris scattered as Madara is slammed, hard, into the ground.

The white-haired boy forms a hand seal and presses a hand and plants something on the Uchiha, who suddenly falls onto his knees, his face a contortion of shock and pain.

"My chakra…!" he groans, and Hashirama notices a white, doughy substance begin to gnaw at Madara's limbs as his chakra is slowly sucked out, rendering him completely unable to fight.

He watches in fear, helpless.

 _"_ _ _What did you do?"__ he repeats disbelievingly.

"What did __I__ do?" the white-haired boy asks, tilting his head innocently to one side, his lips curved into a manic grin, as a ginger-haired boy suddenly appears behind them. The ginger's face is completely emotionless, though Hashirama swears that the boy's hands were shaking.

The white-haired boy charges forwards towards Hashirama suddenly, wielding the sword as if it was an extension of his own body. Hashirama leaps back, and winces as the sword slices his cheek. He gets dangerously close to a fatal wound multiple times.

Hashirama throws the girl in his arms to the side, next to where Madara lay. He sees the white substance slowly beginning to encompass his body, and feels guilty as he leaves his friends behind, even though he knows that it is the best thing to do in that sort of situation.

Although Naoko is unconscious and Madara is trapped in the enemy's jutsu, he reminds himself, they are far from defenseless. He believes in them.

"Wood Style: Great Forest Technique!" he calls, forcing the white-haired boy back. He notes to himself that the ginger-haired boy isn't attacking, even though he was clearly in a position to do so, especially since Naoko and Madara were not able to fight.

He guiltily notes that Madara's eyes are popping with the strain of keeping his head away from the substance and from attempting to escape from the white mass, and hurries up.

" _ _WHAT DID YOU DO TO THEM?!__ " Hashirama screams, and shoots a rain of kunai at the white-haired boy, who cancels them out using his sword.

The ginger-haired boy's eyes widen slightly and he charges towards Naoko and Madara, and Hashirama, only slightly surprised, shoots after him. "Earth Style: Mud Wall!" he calls, and the wall crumbles slightly as the white-haired boy slams into it.

"I won't let you touch them!" he snarls, and goes into a rally with the the white-haired boy, trading blows and not letting him get close. He makes sure to keep a distance between them, wary of the boy's white substance jutsu.

He throws several kunai at the ginger-haired boy, panic rising as the boy draws close to his friends. Hashirama blocks the white-haired boy's punch with his sword, which cuts at his skin but doesn't draw blood. The ginger scrambles towards Naoko, frantically holding two fingers to the side of her neck.

"Mihara, what did you do to her?" the boy whispers, terrified. "Thank God that she's still alive, but she won't wake up. Was this your doing, Mihara? What did you do?"

Hashirama hesitates for a split second.

It's a good thing that his reactions are quick, otherwise he'd be dead, but he falls to the ground as Mihara yanks his sword away from his hands.

"What did I do?" Mihara whispers, suddenly faltering in his step, genuinely enraged. Hashirama scrambles away from him and towards the bodies of his friends as the other boy is distracted. "You mean, what did __you__ do? After all, this war was your plan. This war was because of you. What happened to __them__ was because of you, Kenta!"

Mihara's face suddenly splits into a smile. He takes a kunai and spins it around his finger, then throws it up and catches it, pointing it at the bodies on the ground - in particular, the body of the girl. Hashirama watches him wearily, weaponless.

"You said you wouldn't harm her. You gave your word," Kenta whispers as it slowly dawns on him. "You __promised__."

Hashirama slowly turns towards the ginger-haired boy, both confused and angry at the boy that he never even knew, because this was the one that had caused all of this.

Mihara steps closer towards them and then points Hashirama's sword from Naoko to the ginger-haired boy, smiling creepily. "I see," he jeers. "Well, I guess this is the price for everything that you've done, Kenta. It's your life in exchange for hers. You or her - decide."

Kenta grits his teeth. He's shaking, Hashirama notices, whether it's from anger or sadness, or something else entirely, he doesn't know.

"I NEVER WANTED THIS!" the boy screams, tears pouring down his cheeks. "I TOLD YOU TO NOT HARM HER! STOP IT! MIHARA - STOP IT! You… You __promised!__ "

Hashirama is so confused by the implications of the statement, but takes the opportunity to chop away the white substance from Madara's body using a chakra scalpel. His eyes widen as a large chunk splinters off, allowing Madara break out from the rest, and the white substance cracks and crumbles and falls to the ground. The Uchiha pants and clutches his bleeding eyes, but stands firm.

His eyes are a different kind of red, Hashirama realises, but quickly looks back at the white-haired boy, though he is no longer focusing on them.

 _"_ _ _Pay the price, Kenta."__

* * *

 _ _There is a price. There's always a price,__ he had said, and that price is her life. Because she knows that although the weapon will fly at Pip, he'll be aiming for her.

"KAI!"

Naoko wakes up, disoriented.

"Pay the price, Kenta," she hears Zetsu say as he releases the sword. It flies through the air, and her eyes can barely keep track of the blur of dull grey that's shooting towards the boy next to her, and for a second, she almost doesn't think she'll make it in time.

But everything is going in slow motion.

She'll thank those hours of training later, she decides, because although her mind cannot keep up, her body is already moving. It moves with the experience of an athlete, and it moves with the grace of a dancer. It moves with the precision and ease of a shinobi.

 _ _Clunk.__

The metal hits just after she releases the jutsu, and in its place is one of the branches scattered around the clearing. Her body disappears in smoke, and she materialises just to the right of the ginger-haired boy, staring directly at Mihara.

"Substitution Jutsu," she says, grinning smugly at his twitching eyebrow. "It's a staple of any shinobi's repertoire, and yet I only learned it last week - surprising considering how much people seem to enjoy throwing weapons at me."

Silence.

Nobody speaks in the pause, and nobody moves. He grits his teeth and breaks out in cold sweat.

"Nao-chan…" Hashirama whispers, and then repeats it again, steadily growing louder and louder with each word as it finally sinks in.

"You're fast," Madara whispers. "You're… fast. Really fast." He doesn't miss the multitude of blisters and raw skin and metal burns on her legs and feet. He himself never wore weights, and he can only imagine that they're an absolute pain, especially if they engraved imprints in your skin like they had done with Naoko.

He finally gets it now.

 _ _("I would do anything for you.")__

* * *

The kunai whistles through the air.

 _ _The enemy of my enemy is my friend__ , Hashirama decides in that moment. He pulls the ginger-haired boy with him inside one of the large craters on the ground. Meanwhile, Naoko barely sees the black ink sprawled on the off-white tag, but recognises it easily just from the fizzle as the paper begins to burn. She leaps back and rolls to dodge the kunai,and the explosion that rings through the battlefield.

As the dust clears, Madara, with his Sharingan, runs forwards first, but is suddenly pulled back by Kenta. "Don't touch me!" Madara snarls, tugging on his arm, but he holds firm.

"Wait," Kenta whispers. "Look at the ground."

Madara doesn't trust the other boy yet - after all, he had been the enemy less than a few minutes ago - but he complies. Surely enough, strange, white figures slowly emerge from the ground and start to surround them.

"Zetsu clones," Naoko whispers, freezing.

 _ _("…You promised!" he cries.)__

"I say a lot of things, Ken-chan, but that doesn't mean that you should believe them!" the white-haired boy chides, and his skin slowly peels and melts to reveal a deformed, half-black and half-white figure. He lowers his voice but retains his grin. "See?"

The figures, all swaying gently, side to side, identical with the same white bodies and the same manic grins, slowly start to surround them. Madara and Kenta clear a path using their weapons, but it isn't enough to hold them back for long.

The white beings scramble to reach them, and before long, the original Zetsu has completely disappeared.

Madara and Naoko leap upwards as Kenta spews fire, and Naoko kills eight clones at once with her senbon. She grips a kunai in her teeth as protection while her hands form a single seal before the ground groans before splitting, the earth encompassing a multitude of the clones. Their screams are oddly satisfying, she thinks.

She snarls as several of the clones tear at her hair and limbs, and focuses chakra to her hands and swings them off. One of them has their hands tightly wrapped around her neck, squeezing the air and the life out of her. She makes a strangled sound from the back of her throat as another elbows her in the face.

"Let's stay together," Madara warns, throwing the beings off. She takes a deep breath, leaps up to avoid the crowd, and follows after him.

She doesn't realise that they're being separated until it's too late, when Kenta and Hashirama are already too far away for her to reach.

* * *

Hashirama lets out a roar and the people around him melt into puddles of white.

"Fire Style: Great Flame Technique!" shouts the boy next to him, before turning towards Hashirama. He shouts something to him that he can't quite catch, but he's swamped by more white beings before he can repeat it.

He's panicking.

He's scared and he's exhausted from the fight, and the white __things__ won't stop coming. He can't see Madara or Naoko among the crowd of white beings, who keep pouring and pouring while he can barely stand on his feet.

"What are you?!" he cries, as the infinite white beings - grinning and laughing - slowly close in on him. "Wood Style: Great Forest Technique!" he cries, destroying six of the white beings.

He jumps upwards to avoid the cluster of white beings and swings his blade, chopping fourteen bodies in half before they melt into white puddles on the ground. He is getting overwhelmed by the bodies and can barely react in time.

"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!" he hears, and backs away before the balls of fire can start spitting. " _ _Distraction!__ " he hears vaguely through the shouts, and despite the vague instruction, he understands.

His hands automatically fly through the seals. "Wood Style: Domed Wall Jutsu!" he cries, and the dome shield activates and blocks out the two of them from the white beings. He knows that they can travel underground, and reaches out his chakra sense.

"I'll explain everything later," the ginger-haired boy whispers hurriedly. "What's important is that you need to find Zetsu - the original. Kill him and you'll kill the others. I'll distract them for now."

With that, the boy turns to leave.

"Wait!" Hashirama calls out, and the ginger hastily looks back. "What's your name?"

Hashirama doesn't doesn't know why a ginger-haired boy would be fighting in a Senju and Uchiha war, and he doesn't know what the boy's ties are with Naoko or Zetsu - the white-black thing. He doesn't know why he changed his mind, but he's helping them at the moment, and Hashirama will take any help he can get.

He doesn't know how the boy managed to plan the war, how he knew about it in the first place, and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know why Naoko saved his life, because the Naoko he knows would never do that for anyone. He doesn't know what Zetsu is and what he wants, and he doesn't know why Naoko and Kenta don't seem to be surprised.

He doesn't understand, but he isn't sure he wants to, either.

All he wants to know - for now, at least - is what to call the boy that did all this.

"Hono Kenta," the boy replies.

* * *

 **Wow! This chapter was really packed - hopefully you liked it. I hope that the Zetsu twist was ok and made sense. Please follow/favourite/review! I would love to hear feedback.**

 **This is a question I've been wondering for a while now: Which OC do you like the most/think is the best-described or developed? And which characters do you think have a relationship that you think I've depicted/developed well or not well?** **Personally I think that the relationship between Naoko/Alice and Kenta/Pip is really interesting, but I haven't depicted it as well as I would have liked to.**

 **Also, I just came back from a trip to France and Belgium and so my next chapter might come slightly late.**

 **Thank you to everyone who has supported!**


	19. The Watcher

****Chapter 18****

Hashirama squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that the others would be able to keep the Zetsu back for a bit longer. He searches among the crowd. It stretches his sensory abilities to his very limits, and his head throbs, but he still can't find the original Zetsu.

It's been minutes - entire minutes - and he can only trust Kenta to keep the clones back.

"Give me a few seconds!" he yells in response to Kenta's chakra flare, knowing that he is starting to get overwhelmed.

Zetsu clones begin to erupt from the ground. Hashirama slices their heads off before they can do anything, however. They are thumping on the walls of the dome shield, making it hard for him to concentrate, and splinters of wood start crumbling down.

He breaks out of the dome, breathing heavily. He sends a worried look to Kenta, before seeing the same white substance gnawing at the boy's arm. His mouth drops open.

"It's a spore," the boy explains - Hashirama doesn't understand how he can be so calm in such a situation. He doesn't understand how he can smirk - especially in this situation. "Now the original is sucking up my chakra. Look for that one."

He finally gets it. "You're smart," he whispers in realisation, grinning, and closes his eyes again.

 _"_ _ _Thank you."__

There are so many of the same chakra signatures in one area, and he is supposed to find one of them. It's like finding a needle in a haystack, except it's more like finding a certain straw of hay in a haystack. He almost gives up, before he detects a tiny waver, a fault so small, so untraceable, that he had missed it the first six times.

His mouth drops open.

One of the Zetsus is gaining chakra.

"This way!" he shouts, and the other two follow him. He's surprised to see that the entire battlefield is practically cleared of Senju or Uchiha, aside from the dead bodies littering the floor. He doesn't understand why or how, but he'll ask later.

He charges towards the chakra signature, and he runs faster than he has ever done before. Kenta follows steadily behind and shoots a fountain of fire into the air. He gives a high-pitched whistle that he hopes Madara and Naoko will notice, but carries on without delay.

Hashirama moves with a one-track mind.

* * *

 _"_ _ _What are you going to call the baby?" she asks gently.__

 _"_ _ _Either Danzo or Ayame, depending on their gender," Ichiro replies.__

 _ _Her heart stops temporarily, but she smiles and congratulates him. She knows that the child is going to be a boy named Danzo, who will later grow up to be a cold-blooded villain. She knows that she ought to kill him before any problems are made, because with this one death she can prevent thousands of others.__

 _ _She should kill him, she knows. It's for the greater good.__

 _"_ _ _I'll protect the child with my life," she says instead.__

* * *

They close in on the original Zetsu, both of them hidden. They all perch silently, unnoticeable, waiting for the right moment. The white-black being stands on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the battleground.

They are solely focused on their goal.

"The girl stopped the fighting," he whispers, his face visibly twisted in fear and anger and spite. "But I killed… She stopped the fighting - the fighting that didn't stop for centuries - with twenty words. The plan… The plan isn't… __Mother…!__ "

None of the two question it, although their hearts beat faster and their eyes widen at the mention of the girl, their friend, who had possibly stopped the fighting - the girl who had changed history and maybe had stopped the war. Maybe it isn't an alliance written with pen and paper, and maybe it's nothing permanent, but it's sure as hell a big thing.

She stopped the fighting with twenty words, and that's only emphasised by their motley crew - they are four enemies brought together as friends because of one person. A Senju, an Uchiha, a Hono and a Shimura - the unlikeliest of allies; they are the children of four enemy clans who have had a history of only war and fighting for centuries.

They have all made mistakes, but it suddenly doesn't matter anymore.

And it's all because of a Watcher who pressed a wrong button.

* * *

In the Hono compound, an alarm blares and a meeting is called. The Clan Head and his children hurry over, while messenger birds are being sent to the Shimura and Aoi clans. Somehow all three clan heirs have disappeared within a few hours of each other.

"They won't be happy," Kouta says grimly.

* * *

Tobirama stands next to Izuna - __that Uchiha scum__ , he thinks to himself - and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. There is a clear divide between the Uchiha and the Senju in the clearing, with Tobirama and Izuna being the division line.

Senju Butsuma's body lies on the floor beside him. The corpse's tissues are decaying rapidly. __He's been dead for days, maybe even weeks or months__ , Tobirama notes dully, but feels no apparent emotion. He wonders if he had ever cared for the man he called his father.

He looks to the sky and wonders what would happen to the clan. He searches for Hashirama's chakra signature and finds it immediately. It is far away and, judging by the frequent chakra flares and dulls, there is a fight going on.

The Uchiha have no medics and people are dying out fast. He knows what Hashirama would want, but remains unwilling to actually carry it out.

"...Go help them," he orders one of the medics unwillingly. They look skeptically back at him, but the only thing he does is stare back.

"We don't need your help, you know," Izuna spits, scowling.

"Clearly you do," Tobirama replies curtly, gesturing at the mass of injured Uchiha that can be seen for miles around.

"You're the one who needs help. We Uchiha easily overpower you Senju, you know," Izuna replies smugly, with a hint of pride.

"Don't be absurd," Tobirama shoots back. "Everyone knows that the Senju are stronger."

" _ _You're__ the one who's being absurd."

He sighs, then rolls his eyes as he sees the silly smirk plastered on Izuna's face. "Say, who was that girl you were talking to?" the Uchiha suddenly asks. "She wasn't a Senju or an Uchiha, was she? What would someone else be doing fighting here - of all places? And why are you listening to her?"

Tobirama shrugs and sighs. "I don't know," he answers truthfully. "She called herself Shimura Naoko, but there is evidence to support the fact that she was once a spy in the Senju main compound. She stayed there for about a year before we even noticed. She was also found to be friends with my brother," he adds bitterly. "Even my brother didn't notice until recently."

He doesn't know why he's telling Izuna - an Uchiha - this, especially since it's a clan secret that shouldn't be revealed to non-clan members, but he can't stop it all from pouring out.

"My brother wouldn't fall for that kind of trick," Izuna replies smugly.

Tobirama sighs and gently nudges the other boy. "Clearly he did. You're being ridiculous. Don't you remember that other day at the Serpent River?"

 _ _(Both boys stare at each other. "Madara…" the Senju starts. "Naoko always said…"__

 _"_ _ _I don't care what Naoko said. She's probably dead by now, anyway. Besides, I knew it was only a foolish dream. I guess we'll never be able to make that idealistic dream of ours happen," Madara snaps.__

 _ _It's in that moment that he steels himself to cut all ties with the boy that he both loves as his brother and despises as his enemy.)__

Both of them fall into a sombre silence, only steadily watching as their respective clans continue to get themselves together. "Sorry," Izuna offers quietly.

"It wasn't your fault," Tobirama replies. "It was neither of ours."

* * *

There is a stream of red in the sky, then a burst of chakra that suddenly appears in the distance, and both Naoko and Madara's heads whip in that direction. Naoko suddenly is hit by a vision of a world filled with skyscrapers and billboards illuminated by glowing lights, where even the night wasn't dark.

Madara sheathes his sword as the bodies of four clones suddenly drop to the group and melt into white puddles."Let's go," he says. She grins.

"Don't get left behind," she teases.

"As if you could beat me," he drawls, rolling his eyes.

* * *

"Should we send out troops to find them?" Kouta asks nervously.

Ichiro's lips are quivering, and his hands are shaking against the table. "No," he decides. "She'll come back. I know she will."

The Aoi clan head sighs. "I agree. Mihara will not be found unless he wants to be. Your brother Kenta is strong, too. I believe that there is no reason to worry."

"Right," Kouta says quietly.

* * *

They run. Walls of dirt spring up from behind them without Naoko needing to speak or even weave hand signs. The clones are following them with ease, and although Naoko and Madara keep clearing them away, more spring back. They are infinite and unlimited, while Naoko and Madara are very well finite and limited.

There is a flare of pain suddenly in her throat. Her foot slides on one of the branches and her body tumbles to the ground. She rolls in the air and lands deftly on her feet.

Coughs rack her body, and the blotches of green and blue-black on her neck prickle painfully with every breath she takes. She slams several Zetsu away and leaps into the air to escape the crowd of white beings.

One of the clones grabs onto her leg, grinning with that strange, strange smile, yellow eyes shaped in laughing crescents, and she flails. "Get off!" she screams, and slices his hand off with a chakra scalpel.

She is breathing heavily as she lands next to Madara, who is already leaving.

"Wait up," she coughs, leaning heavily against a tree trunk. Her muscles are fine, and she knows that they would be able to run for another few miles without getting tired. Her stamina has much improved and she knows that she can do better. She's not even that tired, even though she's been fighting for so long.

It's just her lungs.

"Are you okay?" Madara asks, coming to a halt. "Ready to go? We really need to hurry."

She nods, and swings a chakra-enhanced fist backwards into a Zetsu clone. She tries to stand up again but falls to the ground, wheezing. "Go on," she says, her voice hoarse and dry. "I'll catch up." She tries to give him what seems like a reassuring smile, but if anything, it only accentuates the bags under her eyes. "Seriously, I'm fine, Madara. Don't worry about me."

Madara gives her a doubtful look but doesn't say anything.

* * *

Poison.

It is oddly fitting for one such as Shimura Naoko. Although it is not her weapon of choice in most forms of combat, her skill in that field is undeniable. She can take the most ordinary roots and metals and turn them into the deadliest things imaginable.

She rarely uses them despite this, because poisons are unwieldy. Their possibilities are limitless, and the risk of self-harm is incredibly high. Once you have used her poisons, you can't go back. Your skin immediately froths and bubbles and you'll die an excruciating death. This is the poison that she gave to Madara and Hashirama.

How funny - she thought in hindsight - that __poison__ , of all things - deadly and evil - would be her parting gift to them.

How funny - she thought - that the thing that, for most people, symbolised death and corruption, for her, symbolised friendship.

* * *

Hashirama signals to his right and holds up one finger. Kenta immediately recognises Madara's presence. If he hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have found it, and if Madara hadn't allowed himself to be spotted, he wouldn't have seen. His eyebrows furrow as he can't find Naoko, but Hashirama shakes his head and Kenta doesn't pry.

Madara gives a sequence of hand signals that Kenta can't even begin to understand, but Hashirama nods grimly, and holds up one hand with two fingers up.

 _ _Attack__ , Kenta recognises, and even though he's confused, he nods, and they begin the countdown. He's worried for Naoko, of course, but he recognises that he can't let the absence one person stand in the way of peace. He tells himself that he trusts her, but deep down, Kenta isn't sure he does. Pip would trust Alice, he knows, so why can't Kenta do the same for Naoko?

 _ _But Kenta is not Pip, and Naoko is not Alice,__ a voice rings in his mind, and even though he knows it's true, he slightly wishes that it wasn't.

* * *

"Tearing Earth: Turning Palm!" she screams, and although many of the Zetsu are swallowed up by the ground, more just keep coming. She jumps into the air and lands deftly on a branch, avoiding the Zetsu. She weaves around the bodies and retreats backwards. They aren't giving her time to catch her much needed breath.

One of them slams into her and knocks her onto the ground. They leap on her, attempting to render her immobile. She flails around desperately, before managing to coat her body with chakra and sink into the ground. She then casts a genjutsu on herself before resurfacing for air. They notice her footprints in the muddy ground, however, and charge after her.

She continues running and runs upwards, but they follow.

 _"_ _ _You can run but you can't hide!"__ one of the clones shout, and she despairs in knowing that it is true.

She trips slightly on one of the branches before regaining her footing, and even that slight hesitation brings the clones that much closer. She cuts off one of the branches of the tree using a chakra scalpel and uses it as a makeshift weapon, swinging it at the clones.

The Zetsu are overwhelming her. She knows that she told Madara she'd be fine, but she knows that she's not.

She swallows another chakra pill - knowing that she has exceeded the limit already - and relishes the boost of chakra and strength she gets from it. She attaches an explosive tag to a kunai and throws it behind her, not bothering to check how many clones it killed.

That's when the clones begin to use each other as weapons. One clone grabs another by the leg and swings them at her, and the only way she can dodge is by running in circles. They bait her towards a clearing where they will have the advantage, and although she knows this, she cannot stop it.

Soon enough, she is surrounded. There is a single tree in the middle of the small clearing, gnarled and twisted and loaded with chakra. She recognises that it is probably the remains from a Senju's Wood Style jutsu.

The clones clamour and try to reach her, but she swings them off using chakra. One of them comes scarily close to knocking her off the tree altogether. The clones then begin to shake the tree and cut at it using chakra.

She opens her pouch and takes out a small, glass bottle and twists the lid off, her hands shaking. She takes deep swallows of air as her lungs suddenly constrict, then jumps upwards, then away again to avoid more clones. She dumps some of the bottle's contents into the air, feeling a slight thrill in her veins as she does so.

"Wind Style: Vacuum Wave," she whispers.

There is only a small gust of wind - if it can even be called that - but it is enough. It carries the particles of death towards the clones, who don't even know what they've been hit by. She runs and doesn't look back, fueled by their screams and cries.

* * *

The Aoi clan is small, but dangerous. Its members' kekkei genkai is composed of an ability to shapeshift both body and chakra, and their subtlety is definitely to be feared. Looking at the boy before her, Naoko is automatically on guard.

There lies a white-haired boy with dark eyes shut. He has been dead for months.

Naoko crouches down beside the body and gently lifts a grimy hand. He looks almost gentle, like a newborn baby. "Mihara-san," she whispers as the realisation dawns on her. Her fists clench at her sides and start to shake.

Tears trickle down her cheeks.

The Aoi clan is small, but dangerous. Its members' kekkei genkai is composed of an ability to shapeshift both body and chakra, and their subtlety is definitely to be feared. They are masters of deception, and they are aware of everything and everyone.

…Which is what makes Zetsu is so much worse.

* * *

She sees them. She runs.

 _ _Tiger. Boar. Ox. Dog. Snake.__

* * *

The three attack simultaneously.

They are three blurs, and if Zetsu had reacted a millisecond slower, he'd have been missing two arms and a head. He plunges into the ground to avoid the attack, immediately forced into the defensive.

"Wood Style: Laughing Buddha Jutsu!" Hashirama calls, and groans in effort as two massive chakra hands burst from beneath the ground, encircling the white being.

Zetsu hops around them as the hands twist and slams into the ground to avoid the multiple weapons being thrown his way, but dodges the huge fireball going his way by a hair's breadth by leaping into the ground. Kenta's eye twitches, but he continues the onslaught.

"Susanoo!" Madara calls, his eyes burning and his body aching from the jutsu. It hurts worse than he has ever felt. The pain is unimaginable and he can barely move, but somehow he does. He swipes his fist downwards in the air and the skeletal body of chakra follows.

He slams into the ground, which erupts upwards in huge shards of rock, and Zetsu is forced out of his hiding place in the ground.

Madara casts a genjutsu on him, but it barely holds Zetsu in place for a second before he breaks out of it, an infuriating grin dancing on his lips all the while. He flies between the fireballs and the wood, but he doesn't see the shuriken coming his way until one grazes his arm.

It's poisoned - pure, undiluted poison - and his arm begins to froth and bubble and Zetsu blindly stumbles around as the poison spreads through his body.

Kenta grins. "I guess this is why she never used poison in battle," he says, throwing the small bottle back to Hashirama, who catches it easily.

It's a short fight, but it's sweet.

They have him surrounded. One of Hashirama's chakra hands clutches Zetsu tightly, and the three shinobi slowly close in. Madara lets go of the Susanoo and deactivates his Sharingan, clutching his eyes tightly as he falls on his knees.

"Surrender?" Hashirama asks seriously, and Kenta wraps the wire around Zetsu's body and pulls it taut, at the ready. Moving an inch in any direction would easily kill him.

Zetsu suddenly grins.

" _ _Never.__ "

Only then does Hashirama realise that Zetsu wasn't the one who was surrounded. The explosive tags, previously hidden under genjutsu, suddenly all start to glow, and there is no way for any of the three to escape alive. The white being slowly melts and seeps through one of the cracks in the ground, his smile forever burned into Hashirama's mind.

Suddenly more white beings appear through the ground, grabbing them by their legs and arms to stop any hand seals, trapping the three. Madara attempts to activate his Mangekyou but it only results in a fierce headache.

Hashirama grabs onto the other two in desperation. He sees a figure in the distance - dark, narrow eyes razor sharp, black hair billowing in the breeze. Her eyes land on them, and he screams for her to run away, a single tear running down his cheeks. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care, because she runs towards them.

 _ _This is the end__ , Hashirama realises.

The explosion rings through the battlefield.

* * *

She sees a flash of red, and her body moves by itself. She doesn't know what has happened until she finally opens her eyes.

Her hands are still in the snake seal, and it takes her a while to notice that she is now the one standing in the middle of the pile of Zetsu. She notices Madara, Hashirama and Kenta - her friends - in the position that she was only just in, noticeably confused. She locks eyes with Kenta for a second, and he yells something to her that she can't hear.

She raises mud walls on either side of her in order to protect herself from the explosion, even though she knows that it's pointless. Everything is white, and both her retinas and entire body burn. Her eardrums burst and she can't hear anything.

 _"_ _ _Substitution Jutsu__ , _"_ she whispers feebly, her hands dropping by her side. It's a staple of any shinobi's repertoire, and she only thanks the heavens that she learnt it and manged to save her friends' lives.

Shock and adrenaline hit her before the pain, and that's the only reason that she manages to smile. The mud walls crumble around her and she is knocked over backwards by a large chunk. A large section of her body is crushed underneath, but she can't feel it. She only feels numb.

Blood stains her clothes and spreads like a beautiful ink tattoo across her chest. She can no longer breathe. There's something sharp and metal in her chest, and from the corner of her eye, she sees the silver brooch lodged in her wound. It is cleanly sliced into two pieces.

 _ _How ironic,__ she thinks to herself.

 _ _Those in the ninja world who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are even lower than scum__ , she reminds herself, and she smiles, seeing her friends run up to her.

She can feel external chakra entering her body, trying to keep her alive, but it's not working. " _ _You're a medic. You can save her, can't you?!__ " she vaguely hears, though the voice is already disappearing. _"_ _ _Alice, why?! WHY?!"__

A great shinobi once said - or, rather, will say - that a shinobi's life is not measured by how they lived but rather what they managed to accomplish before their death. If that's true, Naoko thinks to herself, then she's done a __darn good job__.

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

She lets out a laugh - a real one, this time, and a happy one - and chokes on the blood in her mouth. Her body is too weak to cough, however, and she is slowly being suffocated by her own blood.

 _"_ _ _My body just moved on its own… Pip… I'm sorry."__

"...Alice?" The foreign language vaguely registers in her mind. It sounds strange and wrong, in this time and place, but she feels comforted. " _ _Alice?__ ALICE! Alice, wake up! Stop it! Keep listening to my voice, focus on my voice. __Alice__ … Alice…"

 _ _Beep… Beep… Beep…__

No matter how hard she tries, the voice won't stay in her mind. It's drifting, floating, far, far away, and although she desperately tries to cling to the wisps of life, she cannot stop. She is sinking deeper and deeper into the sea of death, and she cannot swim.

 _ _But__ , she thinks. __At least we're even now.__

And she's truly, honestly happy.

 _ _Beep… Bee - )__

* * *

She doesn't remember anything.

Her body is floating, except her body is not there. Her soul, perhaps, or maybe her spirit - whatever people call it. She vaguely remembers the feeling of floating in the nothingness.

 _"_ _ _A5N009Q's beginning to Sense!"__ someone - or something - in the background cries. All her senses are muted, and her body - though it doesn't exist - feels completely numb. She can't describe the feeling, except that it doesn't hurt.

When the White comes, and when the sounds and sights and smells go, that's when the pain finally disappears, and that's when the End finally comes.

* * *

A5N009Q's Watcher takes a deep breath and pinches his forehead.

"My Spirit - A5N009Q - needs to be picked up in World 10993," he sighs to the nearby Reaper, who nods and makes his way to leave.

* * *

 **Yes, I killed Naoko. Sorry about that. Thanks to everyone who has supported etc. There will only be one more chapter before the epilogue and the story's end!**

 **Which POVs would you like to see next chapter?**


	20. The End

**Chapter 19**

(Alice rests her head on her hand, half-heartedly taking notes and listening to the discussion that the teacher and the slightly more enthusiastic students, including Pip, are engaging in - something to do with what they would do if they had the opportunity to change one aspect of the world.

"What about you, Alice?" Pip suddenly asks from the blue.

"Eh, world peace or something like that," she shrugs, jotting down another note, and he rolls his eyes with a snort. "You know, make the world a better place. Whatever they're saying," she says, gesturing to the others at the front of the class.

Naoko smiles back at this. _World peace indeed.)_

* * *

 _What is this place?_

White. Everything was white. There was no sky and no floor, no limits to anything. She walked, something compelling her, though she did not know why. She followed the path, though there really was none, to her death - or was she already dead?

"Hello?" she asks. A window opens up in the white space. There is a being inside the window. This is her Watcher, she knows somehow. She remembers introducing herself to him Before - _or was it After?_ She remembers his tall stature - although he didn't really have one - and she remembers his kind voice and wrinkled face - though he didn't really have those, either.

Memories of this White Stage flood back to her, and she suddenly remembers her first life - and the Before Life, before she had been Created - with such clarity.

"Watcher," she greets. "Please explain. Wouldn't we, at this stage, normally conduct the Initialisation for the rebirth process? What are we doing here?"

"You're right," he replies. "But this is a special case. You have been requested by the Giver."

She knows that this is a big thing. She knows that only four people have ever been requested to meet the Giver, in the history of life and everything before, between and after. "Are you okay?" her Watcher asks sympathetically.

"I physically don't hurt anymore," she admits, "although I still don't…"

She can't finish her sentence.

"I understand how you're feeling," her Watcher whispers solemnly. "We all used to be human once, you know. All the Watchers, the humans and everyone else - even the Giver himself. I understand that it hurts you inside, but this is a burden everyone must bear."

"I know," she replies, and her voice cracks. "I just miss them."

* * *

Madara runs into the arms of his brother, welcomed by the cheers of the crowd. The total death count was nearly a third of both clans.

"He's gone," he whispers. "That despicable man is gone. Mihara - or should I say Zetsu - is dead."

The corpse of Mihara lies on the ground, burns surrounding its entire body. Unlike Hashirama, Madara and Kenta, who had been shielded by Naoko's Mud Walls _(how had she done that? How had she become so much stronger in only a few months?)_ , he had been hit by the brunt of the explosion, only recognisable by the weapons scattered near his corpse.

The majority of the clan members have already been escorted back to the compounds. "I'll take her," Kenta says as they get ready to leave, lifting Naoko's body and carrying it, taking care to avoid touching her burns. He gently covers her eyes and starts walking home. He gives a slight smile that Hashirama returns.

"Let's go, Madara, Izuna," the Uchiha Clan Head orders. "I appreciate your help, but do not expect us to extend the same courtesy," he says, turning to the Senju. "Let's not forget that the Uchiha and Senju are old rivals. We have battled for centuries and -"

" _And I'm sick of it,_ " Madara suddenly interrupts. Everyone turns towards him, but he ignores their stunned expressions. "Hashirama, Tobirama, let's form an alliance between our clans," he says, grinning, and Izuna smiles too. His dulled eyes have regained some of their former shine.

"Peace," he thinks out loud, and then his voice steadily grows louder and louder as he addresses the Senju and Uchiha around him. "As shinobi, death is always knocking on our door. From what I can tell, the only way we can avoid that is to be upfront and honest with the other side… Perhaps even, I don't know, form an alliance with them!" he exclaimed. "And then there might finally be peace!"

There are murmurs between the crowd.

"Madara, what are you…?" his father asks quietly. "Do you even hear what you are saying? This is preposterous! You are not thinking straight!"

"Outo-san, if we need to bring our clan to victory, we need to look to the future. We can't stay stuck in the past forever," he says firmly. "Trust me. Please."

Hashirama's expression is impossible to read. He holds Madara's gaze for a long moment, then eventually softens into a sad and weary smile. A feeling of nostalgia blooms and he wipes away the hot tears that begin to stain his already dirty face.

"Yeah… One day, I'd like to go somewhere like that… and we can all live like that," he replies, quoting the words of a girl from years ago.

He misses her, but it's only now that she's gone that he can truly realise just how much she has done for him, and he hates it. He wishes that he could have done something - anything, and yet at the same time doesn't.

He can't quite grasp exactly what has happened yet, but it makes his heart hurt, and he wants to cry.

"In peace…" he mutters.

* * *

 _(A girl and two boys sit near the river, plotting._

 _In those moments, they are not their clans. They are themselves - three children, the world of war and destruction around them forgotten._

 _Two boys sit near the war-zone, talking._

 _In those moments, they are the representatives of their clans. They have the power to be both themselves and their clans and everyone within them - two nearly-adults with the ability to change the world of war and destruction around them.)_

* * *

They call them psychics.

That's essentially what Naoko is, and that's also what Kenta is. They may not have supernatural powers of the mind that allow them to manipulate time and space, but they definitely have something special.

The Giver - in one of his lives, anyway - was one of them, before he became the Giver, as was Hagoromo's mother Kaguya. He had dreams of a world that he shouldn't have had, which eventually became vaguer and occurred less frequently, until the age of about twelve, when they stopped altogether.

But that's not why Naoko and Kenta are so strange. After all, people with this sort of foreknowledge exist in every universe, it is thought, with approximately one born every year in each universe.

The reason that Naoko and Kenta are so strange is because they arrived in a world with information crucial to the events of such a world, because they had the power to change the world. They even retained the bodies of their previous lives. It's a terrifying thing.

A5N009Q grins at the wrinkled figure. She knows him, and she knew him. His appearance has changed little from when he was a man, but she barely recognises him.

His face is set with deep wrinkles, and his head sprouts spikes of pale, reddish hair and a long goatee that tapers down to his waist, as well as a pair of horns from either side of his forehead, on which a dark red marking sits. His eyes are purple and ringed, and on his white robe is a pattern of six black magatama.

She knows him as the Sage of the Six Paths, and he knows her as the one who brought Ashura's and Indra's incarnates together.

"You," he says wearily, "are an anomaly."

She only smiles.

"You know about the tale of Ashura and Indra, don't you?" he asks. She nods. "Once the physical bodies of Ashura and Indra passed away, their spirits became reincarnated. You know them as Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke, and Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara."

"Right," she agrees. "But what does that have to do with me?"

He sighs. "See, in the original version, before you were added into the equation, why did Hashirama and Madara - or Ashura and Indra, rather - fail, while Naruto and Sasuke managed to resolve those issues? Why, when you were brought into this universe, did everything become resolved? What was different about them and their circumstances?"

"I don't know," she replies bluntly. "They were exactly the same, basically."

"Wrong," he replies, his eyes twinkling. "Team 7 was made up of three people, you know."

It take her a second to understand. "Are you saying that… Sakura… was the reason?" she asks in disbelief. "But Sakura didn't do much, though, did she, in canon? She was pretty much useless the majority of the time. Sure, she saved their lives and everything, but that happened many times with many others. Why is Sakura so special?"

"That may be so," he says, "but Sakura brought out the inner Naruto and the inner Sasuke - just like you brought out the inner Hashirama and Madara."

"...I guess that's right," she agrees.

"You're an anomaly because, by existing, you brought a 'Sakura' figure into the world. The Naoko figure is what finally brought Ashura and Indra - who have never completely seen eye to eye - together," he tells her.

"You're a special one," he says, his lips pursed. "And I have a task that only you can help me with."

* * *

Kenta looks upwards at the sky. It is a burnt orange colour, mixed with a myriad of pink and blue and yellow. There are still stars in the sky, twinkling down on him.

His feet ache. "Alice," he starts to the lifeless body in his arms. "Oh Alice, I'm so sorry," he whispers.

This isn't just the death of a comrade. This isn't just the death of a friend, or the death of family. It's all of those combined, and yet none of these at the same time. She was… She was _so much more_ , and it feels like an injustice to her.

He feels numb.

He should have done something - moved a second faster, kicked a little stronger. It's something so great, and yet it doesn't even matter anymore - not when she's dead.

He lifts a hand to her cheek, strangely pale. Her face is calm, almost teasingly so, as if she would wake up at any moment from sleeping. The only things that would signify otherwise are her pulse and the blooming red stain on her shirt.

He remembers a girl and a boy in the same situation, only with the sirens of the ambulance replacing the current dead silence.

"Some things never change, huh?" he asks, a hint of a smile gracing his lips. "Maybe I'll see you again later though."

He pauses in his step and glances towards the sharp metal lodged in her chest and retches.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. " _I'm sorry. I can't -!_ "

There is a boy and a girl in the middle of nowhere. The girl's heart is no longer beating, but she's very much alive. Where, nobody knows, but they've already had the luck of the draw once - why not again? Everything makes such perfect sense all of a sudden, and although his mind is screaming at him not to do so, his hands move by themselves.

There is a boy and a girl in the middle of nowhere. The boy holds a kunai and holds it over his wrist. His hands are shaking. _Beep… Beep… Beep…_ he hears. It is barely there and yet deafening at the same time. He vaguely sees the outline of a girl and a boy and an ambulance, and he staggers towards it. His mind is whirring. He can almost reach it - he can almost reach _her._

There is a boy and a girl in the middle of nowhere.

One of them is dead and the other is dying.

* * *

Shimura Nanami is plain. She has dark hair and dark eyes, like any other Shimura, docile - a model mother, a supportive wife - and she's everything that every other woman in the compound is.

You might be able to say that she is special for being the Clan Head's wife - but this was in reality just because of her father. She's never considered herself to be anything special or impressive, but she's tried her best. She's accepted herself for who she is, a wife serving her husband and a mother caring for her children - nothing more and nothing less - a side character, if anything, or maybe just an unnamed figure in the background. For goodness' sake - her name was _Nanami!_

If anyone asked - not that they would - she would tell them that she liked caring for children. She disliked nothing in particular. She didn't have a favourite colour. Her skills lay in her calligraphy and her good posture, and her goals in life were to serve her husband and children to the best of her ability. It was what was expected of her.

She was ordinary.

It was strange - to say the least - for her - such a normal, ordinary person - to have given birth to Naoko - such a weird, unusual child, and that was something, considering how strange Ichiro and Isamu had been, even as children.

"My mother's father - your grandfather - lived in the war also. And his father was the head of our clan," she says, staring out at the cold darkness outside. "And your eldest brother will inherit the clan after your father."

There is frost on the window and an eerie noise echoes throughout the house. Naoko is her company, and yet, when Nanami looks at the child that is supposed to be her daughter, she feels only emptier and lonelier. There is nothing but silence in the house, and Nanami can only do so much to fill it.

She smiles kindly at her child - though it _(she_ , Nanami reminds herselfdoesn't act like a child at all - and then looks away again, sighing, when it - _she_ \- doesn't respond in the slightest.

"Ah, Naoko-chan, don't look at me like that," she says wearily, chuckling softly as she slowly gets up. Her smile fades as she stands up again to finish cooking. As she turns to enter the kitchen, she gives the child a final glance and a brief smile.

She loves her child.

It is a fact of life, and yet she doesn't know if it's really true.

She never wakes up at two in the morning to feed her child, unlike all the other mothers. She never comes home to a toothy smile. She never hears her child giggling and babbling or even sees her smiling.

She wonders what's wrong with her child, and then she wonders if it's actually her fault. She wonders what's wrong with her, and then she becomes so tired and desperate and lonely that she breaks down.

She wonders. In her sleep, she dreams of the piercing eyes of the child she is supposed to call her own. She dreams of things that make her terrified of her own child, and each time she looks at her child, she becomes more scared.

Her child is three years old when she first begins to speak to Nanami. Naoko has been known to speak to others - strangers, even - and yet, not to her own mother. It makes Nanami so scared and so angry and frustrated.

"I love you," she says to the child.

She waits for a reply but it doesn't come. She laughs quietly, smiles, then leaves the room. She hates the look in her child's eyes - betrayed, disgusted almost - and although she hates this, at the same time, there is a quality in the child that makes Nanami hesitate to let harm come to her.

It takes her another year for her to realise why she has never been able to allow her child to be harmed. It takes her another year to realise that it doesn't matter if Naoko hates her, but she will never hate Naoko. It takes her another year to realise that she loves Naoko. No matter how strange she seems, for some reason, she loves her child.

When the child turns seven, Nanami doesn't hesitate to give her the family heirloom, because she never wants her child to become harmed.

Soon after is when the inevitable finally happens, but Nanami doesn't mind so much as long as her child is safe. She crawls away from the Uchiha, her leg twisted unnaturally, its flesh dark red with burns.

 _Okaa-san!"_ she hears, and vaguely notices it as Naoko. Suddenly there is an ache in her stomach that makes her almost fall unconscious, again and again and again. She watches her own child stabbing her repeatedly but is too weak to stop her.

"Okaa-san, a-are you -?!"

She strokes a strand of her daughter's hair back and tucks it behind her ear, and smiles as her daughter strokes her tear-streaked face. There is no chance of her survival.

"No… no…" she hears, and she struggles to clutch on to those strands of consciousness. "Don't leave me, mama…"

"Be s-strong… my baby… okay?" she whispers, and in that moment, she is not just another face in the background. She is Shimura Nanami, and in her twenty seconds of fame, where she finally did something useless for once and saved her daughter's life, she smiles because she knows it is the only thing to do.

"I love you," she hears vaguely.

"I love you too," Nanami replies, and even though she knows that Naoko can't hear it, she also knows that her daughter has gotten the message.

* * *

Zetsu hauls himself away, his breathing laboured and his chakra completely deteriorated.

"No matter," he says to himself. "I can wait a few years. Twenty years won't make a difference, not when I've lived in this world for so long already. They think I'm dead anyway."

* * *

 _Don't do it_ , he hears Naoko urge him. _Live, please._

The blade drops to the ground with a clang. The red-haired boy continues walking.

One step.

Two steps.

Naoko, at ten years old, lays on her bed, staring upwards at the ceiling. Darkness has already swallowed up the night, but she is not sleepy. She smiles, wide awake, remembering.

* * *

"Tomodachi," she whispers into the silence.

Her lips curl around the word so naturally. "Tomodachi," she repeats. "Friend." Because that's what they are now. Naoko, Hashirama and Madara, she repeats to herself. The rhythm of the words soothe her. How unusual, but… nice, at the same time.

"Tomodachi," she says again, and pauses. "Tomodachi. _Friend._ "

* * *

"It's about time that we chose a name for the village too," a sixteen-year-old Hashirama says with a grin. "Do you have any ideas?"

"Konoha?" Kenta suggests. "The Village Hidden in the Leaves."

"...Heh, it's not actually that bad," Madara replies, smirking.

 _(There are three men sitting on the cliffs overlooking the village. One of them is an Uchiha, one of them is a Hono, and the other is a Senju, but they are brothers._

 _There are three men sitting on the cliffs overlooking the village. Their childhood dream, which had once seemed like nothing more than that - an idle fantasy - became reality._

 _There are three men sitting on the cliffs overlooking the village. Any passerby would tell you that nobody else was there, and yet any of the three men would swear that four people were present.)_

"It's… so simple, without even a twist… Exactly how it looks…" Hashirama mutters, hanging his head.

"Shut up, Hashirama!" Madara barks. "As if you could do any better! And why have you still not gotten that depression issue fixed?!"

 _(Naoko smiles. "I like it," she says, chuckling. "Konoha.")_

* * *

Tobirama stands on the cliff, his eyes closed. He takes in a breath and almost immediately disappears.

He watches fondly at the view of his elder brother and Madara sparring, his eyes flickering towards the two children 'hidden' behind one of the bushes, staring in awe at the display. Hashirama's eyes move towards him for a second, his eyes crinkling in a smile as he barely manages to avoid a blow from Madara, who follows up with another bout of attacks.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, Tobirama recognises as one of the two boys, known in the village as a kind-hearted prodigy. The other boy is Shimura Danzo, less talented but nonetheless impressive. There is a distinct similarity in the boy's slanted, hazelnut brown eyes and roughly chiselled face to _that girl_ , he thinks, and his heart softens slightly.

* * *

"Are you ready?" he asks.

"Yes, Giver," she replies steadily. He gives her a last smile. Her vision is already blurring and soon the darkness engulfs her. Sense begins to return to her body.

 _Beep… Beep… Beep…_

There is a baby, somewhere, wailing until her throat is hoarse. There is a woman crying tears of joy, and a man cradling the baby in his arms. There is a mother and a father and their daughter. There is a family.

Naoko wakes up (only she's not Naoko anymore, but now she doesn't even care, because it's all going to be okay).

 _Shh…" she whispers, and the baby quietens.)_

"Haruno Sakura," the woman whispers.

 _("Hello," Not-Naoko says gently to the baby. "I'm Inner Sakura. I'm here to look after you.")_


	21. Epilogue

****Epilogue****

"Iruka Sensei, this is so __boring!__ Boring! BORING! __BORING!"__

 _"_ _ _NARUTO, SHUT U -"__

These are the typical sounds of a Monday morning in the brightly-lit rooms of the Academy. In Room 202, a crash is heard, and then a yell, before the lesson resumes. Sasuke's eyes wander aimlessly from one part of the ceiling to another, his mind bursting and yet blank.

A girl sits to his right. It is Haruno Sakura, a hard-working student with a shrewdness and cunning that is more than unusual in a ten-year-old. She is a fangirl, though, through and through, but there are moments in which she looks as if she knows things that she shouldn't. Often her green eyes glimmer with it.

Iruka coughs and continues, his face tinged with red. Naruto remains bound in one corner of the room, pouting.

"As I was saying," their sensei begins, "Konoha was jointly created by Uchiha Madara, Senju Hashirama and Hono Kenta, who we now know of as the First Hokage. The three of them united their respective clans after the Warring Era and -"

"Why do we need to know about this kind of stuff anyway?!" Naruto interrupts suddenly, and Iruka's eye twitches. "I don't care! I wanna learn about jutsu!"

They are told to return to their textbooks as Iruka hauls Naruto out of the classroom and into the hallway. There is not-so-quiet shouting outside.

Sasuke stares at his book, then outside, where the heads of the Hokage were carved. The first of them is Hono Kenta, and next to his surly, bony face is the head of Senju Tobirama, and then Sarutobi Hiruzen and Namikaze Minato.

On the edge of the cliff of the Hokage Mountains is a stone slab, barely visible but definitely there, dark white and stained with yellow scars of old age, delicately carved into. The engraving is clearly a form of language, but it's not in Japanese, Sasuke knows.

He wonders.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who has supported all through the story! It has finally come to an ending after an entire year!


End file.
